Monday, October 02, 2006

Too big to be a kid

Over the weekend, I went to my office's annual fall picnic. Mr. Honey went with me. We had a nice time. That's the boring part. On to the excitement!

I don't know if it's like this in your neck of the woods, but around here, every celebration is accompanied by a bouncy castle. At every birthday party, promotion party, going-away party, etc., that we've been invited to, the adults have rented a huge bouncy castle for the kids to play in so the adults can have adult-like conversations without being interrupted by the kids every other minute. Or so the story goes. When I get to these parties, I eye the bouncy castle, then I eye the half-dozen kids bouncing around in it, and I wonder how mad the parents would be if I chased the kids out so I can be a kid again and jump in the bouncy castle.

As luck would have it, at the company picnic this weekend, there was an empty bouncy castle. Two kids got in, jumped for 15 seconds, climbed back out. The bouncy castle sat empty for another half hour. I kept staring at it until Mr. Honey finally ordered me to go jump in the bouncy castle. Apparently I was driving him nuts.

So I went to jump in the bouncy castle. Nobody else was in it, so I tossed my shoes at the little entryway and hopped up inside. Then I bounced. And bounced. And then my office-neighbor gasped, "What are you doing? I just told my 12-year-old that's for the little kids!"

I just grinned and bounced some more. "I love this thing!"

And then my thighs started hurting.

And then a 5-year-old climbed inside. "Make me jump high!" he said.

So we bounced together. And my legs started getting wobbly. And then the castle started to deflate.

That's right. I broke the bouncy castle. Well, maybe "broke" is a strong word. Really, one of the ties came loose and started letting the air out, but that got fixed, and I crawled out of the bouncy castle and let the kids have it again. Next time I looked, there were half a dozen kids hopping around inside it. So now I figure I was just doing my civic duty by getting in the bouncy castle. See, the kids were afraid to use it until they saw that I could take it down if I needed to. Yeah. That's it. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Hope you have a bouncy-castle-fun Monday!

Posted by Honey :: 8:07 AM :: 6 Comments:

Post a Comment

---------------------------------------