Refractions Through The Night

A trampoline is an odd thing. Regardless of ones age it can easily provide a myriad of entertainment. For example, kids jumping and doing the occasional flip during a birthday party, (However, punish the kids that does the double back flip, no one likes a showoff. Also, it may just be a liability, this is America after all.) Trampolines also give high school stoners a place to smoke and occasionally get laid, it allows college kids to contemplate philosophy in a place that doesn't serve chi lattes, and if arthritis isn't an inhibitor, the trampoline gives Grandma the satisfaction of realizing she was young once too.

Now, my circumstance is a little different, because the trampoline holds a very dear place in my heart. Without reciting to you my entire childhood tale, if I was Orson Wells, trampoline would be my rosebud.

Yet, tonight I found myself on one such contraption, jumping around, having a jolly good time (Yes, I know I just used the word jolly, but I've been wanting to use it all day, and this just seemed like an all too perfect opportunity. You down?) I was over at a friends house, and during those awkwardly timed bounces I was transported back to my glory days, the summer of 4th grade, where we ate ice cream, went to skate parks, screamed songs from car windows, and sleep overs were an already understood daily occurrence. We watched awesome cartoons, played on the street, launched rockets, and got into a little trouble. We watched the stars at night, lived our youth.

I am now back jumping on the trampoline of the present day, it becoming increasingly evident that the bouncing qualities I had as a 10 year old have long diminished. I fall down, and instead of getting back up I stare at the sky. Realizing that some of the light released from the stars I gazed upon as a child, may just be reaching me now, eight years later.

My friends leave the trampoline, already bored. They walk back towards the house, our phones, our cars. I stay, still starring at the sky, secretly hoping to rekindle some of the feeling from that amazing summer.

I wait. It never comes. Nirvana evades me, there will be no grand revelation this evening.

I stand up and walk back towards the house, keys jangling in my pocket, not missing those years, but simply remembering, for because I had them, I am me.