Seemed Like a Good Idea

I’ve been reminiscing about my childhood lately. I remember an incident that seemed like a good idea, but then again, I was only about eleven.

My sister and I shared our parent’s old double bed after she outgrew her crib. We’re nine years apart and we lived in Navy housing in Seattle. It was one of the oldest Navy housing projects in town and it happened to be smack in the middle of a fairly affluent neighborhood. There were ten apartments in each building and our apartment was on the second floor. The apartments didn’t have closet doors, instead they had a curtain rod. There were other oddities about those apartments but I’ll save that for another time. My parents kept a couple of old chairs they brought from Japan in my closet, just to get them out of the way.

One of the things my sister and I liked to do was stand on the back of the chairs, face our big double bed, leap into the air, do a somersault and land on the bed on our backs. My sister was very impressed I could do a somersault, sometimes even a double somersault. Our bed was kind of lumpy to begin with but we added even more lumps with our acrobatics.

Back to the part about me being not very practical. Some would even say down right stupid. One day, I remember it was a gorgeous sunny afternoon, which was something to enjoy, especially in Seattle. I was waiting for my friends to join me in our communal front lawn when I got the notion to do an aerial somersault on the recently mowed green lawn.

I leapt into the air, as high as I could, somersaulted and landed, as usual, flat on my back. The ground was not as forgiving as our bed which I remembered shortly after I was able to breathe again. The hardnes just didn’t occur to me as being a relevant issue at the time.

While I laid on the ground taking in a few more breaths, I thought, “That was stupid.” I realized how stupid it must have looked to anyone watching me.  I’m sure they thought they witnessed the most stupid act ever. I quickly sat up and looked all around me.  Relieved that no one was around, I stood up as fast as I could.  Considering my body sufferred a traumatic experience, it wasn’t as fast as I wanted. It was debatable which was worse, the hurt I felt in my body or my pride.

After a few slow steps, my young and resilient body responded to my mental demands to get out of there fast. I ran to the other side of the building.  Just as I turned the corner, out of view from anyone who may have seen me, I slowed to a respectable, casual walk up the stairs and into our apartment.

Without speaking to my family, I walked into my bedroom, closed the door and eased onto my lumpy yet soft bed where I relived my moment of insanity and winced at my pain.