When I was little I would, like plenty of other kids, jump off of everything. I thought I was so cool. Correction, I was so cool. Eduardo and I were talking about being able to jump from anything, land, and still be able to run around and chase other boys because we were scared of girls even though we had our Dot Dot Cootie Shots. These days, jumping off the top of a jungle gym would be suicidal. Having grown taller, the distance to the ground should seem smaller, it isn’t though for whatever reason. I’m not trying to bust my knees. I know enough to not test this out, things have changed. But we’re still scared of girls.
When you’re young you wonder why adults always think you’re gonna hurt yourself or break something. Now I know. I’ve watched my cousins run around and jump off furniture a number of times. I always think they’re gonna hurt themselves or shatter vases. They do things that look painful and probably would be if they were older than single digits.
I remember jumping off swings in elementary school. Kids would try to get their swing chains parallel to the ground, count three off, then launch. How I never died doing this, I don’t know. Remembering how fun the short flights off of swings was, I tried to repeat the feat two or so years ago. I hurt my ankle and scraped my knees up. In third grade, I had a jump contest with Dwinson and some other random friend. There were always the usual distance competitions, but this was a trick jump contest. We all did the usual spins and whatnot with no clear frontrunner. What followed would be a top 10 play on any given day.
Dwinson followed standard procedure. He pumped hard, trying get the chain parallel, counted off, then jumped. Then he turned back toward the swing, grabbed the chain, came back with it like a pendelum, and landed standing. It was one of the rawest performances I’ve ever seen in my life. If I was with my friends and saw it now, we’d be screaming Ooohs and exchanging daps non-stop. In the middle of the chaos, calm and collected, as if what he did wasn’t going down in history, Dwinson looked straight at us and said
I call it Batman
Dead serious. After the other two headed home, I tried to repeat the feat on my lonesome. I swung high, counted off, and jumped. I grabbed the chain, my hands got pinched, I hurt my ankle, and scraped my knees up.