Jeannie, David and Paul take the plunge! (**reference blog posting dated 09/01/08 at http://www.katyanderik.blogspot.com/ )
As previously noted from the alpine slide adventure a couple of months ago, the biggest plunge of all was taken by Paul. In fact, Paul took two plunges. That afternoon, the eighteen 5 and 6 year olds and the three of us 'older folks' (David, Jeannie and Paul) thought it would be fun to try Jump Zone's inflatable slides. For you flatlanders that don't know what an inflatable slide is, it derives from everyone's favorite playground structure: the metal slide. Instead of metal and wood, though, the slide is made of plastic and filled with air.
Jump Zone sliding is not meant to be difficult. Unlike playground sliding, there is no hot metal, no ladder to climb, no hard surfaces, no rock-throwing, no mud puddles, and no hard landings at the bottom. I don't even think there is an age limit. The only thing you control is where you place your bottom, legs, feet, arms and hands on the slide. To operate; sit, slide, stand up. Somehow, Paul missed these instructions.
For our first run, Paul and Jeannie started together for a friendly race down the fire engine side-by-side slide. As we began our descent, I thought to myself, "Hey, Paul's never driven a car faster than 27 miles an hour, so I'll just take it easy and wait for him at the bottom." Wrong. Before I finished that thought, a Paul-shaped blur was 2 feet* ahead of me (*the slide is approximately 9 feet in length!), disappearing into the air. I didn't see him again until halfway down the fire-engine slide, when I passed him trying to get back on his rear end. I thought to myself, "Paul must have stopped to take a potty break." Wrong. When we met up at the bottom, I could see from the missing skin (knees, hands, elbow) and melted polyester t-shirt (seriously) that Paul had taken a fall. If you were paying attention above, you know that this should not be possible.
He took the challenge to race David for a second run. Not wanting to lose any more skin, Paul noted his intent to "take it easy this time," which he did. Three feet into the race, David was comfortably in the lead, and I thought to myself, "Well, good, he's really taking it easy, so he won't fall this time." Wrong. David got to the bottom and we waited. And waited. And waited. And finally, he finished the last 2 feet - going 0 miles per hour - and made it to the bottom. He had done the impossible. He had fallen on the inflatable Jump Zone fire-engine slide. Twice.
Lucky we had plenty of bandages and ointment left from his alpine slide adventure.
1 comment:
Ginny's mommy here.
Seriously, who lets Paul do these things? Hasn't anyone learned a lesson here? Paul should not be allowed out without a helmet, knee pads and training wheels.
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