A Normal Boy, I Suppose
by Adam Miller
As I grow up, I find myself with an overdeveloped sense of adventure, and some seriously damaged common sense. While parents and adults always said I was crazy, I never seemed hard-pressed to find plenty of children content to join me in my journeys into lunacy. I can’t remember when exactly I started finding such fun in insanity, but I have some very fond memories starting around 7th grade, when I received a giant trampoline for the holidays.
You might figure that if, as my parents advised, I followed the rules by having one person jump at a time, keeping foreign objects off the trampoline, etc, I would be just fine. However, it always seemed that wrestling and trying scooter tricks was far more fun. Heck, I even took the warning stickers off the edge of the trampoline to throw off my parents… but unfortunately, they read the thousand warnings on the box it came in.
It started off innocently enough. I would bounce on the trampoline, practicing flips and spins I learned in gymnastics, my friends sitting on the play structure, watching me go. Then, as soon as we saw my dad walk away from the kitchen window overlooking the backyard, we would all pile onto the trampoline mat, and pretend we were part of the WWF. Needless to say, a few of us ended up bruised on the ground, and I ended up with some very unhappy parents.
“You could have gotten yourselves killed,” they would reprimand. “You guys need to be more careful. And only one on at a time!”
It would seem their pleas fell on deaf ears. It wasn’t three weeks until we were back to hurting ourselves, myself on a skateboard learning a kick flip, my neighbor learning a tail spin on the scooter. We were both on the trampoline; both at the same time. It wasn’t until our legs were blue with bruises and our arms cut up from flying skateboards that we decided to move on to bigger and better activities.
The play structure I mentioned a while back…it happened to be right next to the trampoline, and about 4 feet taller; perfect jumping height, according to the mind of a middle school boy. This newly utilized platform opened up a whole new dimension of being stupid. We could jump from way high in the air, land on the trampoline, and go sailing in a majestic front flip off the far side. My parents were concerned by this behavior, but seemed relatively tolerant for some while. At least until I jumped off the play structure, and tried to bounce into our plumb tree, and after a clean miss went sailing over our fence, and landed in our neighbors vegetable garden. Only a week passed before my parents decided that the play structure would be better off in smaller pieces, which put a hamper on my search for greater heights. Now, you may be quick to guess that these were isolated incidents, limited to my own backyard. However, you’d probably be surprised to find how many screws most adolescent boys have loose.
I can remember another exciting tale, which took place in 10th grade, on a day hike in Tuolumne County, Yosemite. I was hiking, with a whole new group of hooligans, along a winding gravel path which snaked its way along the wall of a 150 foot ravine littered by waterfalls and stands of bright green trees.
After a half hour of walking, we came to a place where the ravine took a sharp turn away from the path-lined wall, and we could see it winding its way into the distance. When we looked down, we could see a waterfall starting 30 feet below and to the left of the path, ending as it splashed into a crystalline pool of water 50 feet below that. It was a beautiful vista; we all took time to observe the wonderful sight.
We sat contemplatively for a good while, thirty seconds at least, before someone blurted out the bright idea we were all thinking. “Let’s see if we can jump into the pool from here!” Now, the phrasing there may mislead some of you readers. It poses a shred of doubt. In actuality, we were all stripping down to our bathing suits and clearing off the edge of that path before the suggestion was finished.
I jumped off and seemed to soar over the path’s edge, and over the jagged rocks below like a graceful eagle. Four eternal seconds later, I slammed through the water’s surface at… I’m going to guess around 40mph… and smacked against a flat, submerged rock. My friend jumped off after that, turned slowly in the air, and landed sideways on the flat of his stomach, and it sounded like every member of an audience, clapping all at once. By the end of our adventure, we hobbled back to the trailhead with several stubbed toes, a couple sore butts from that rock, and one very, VERY red belly. Oh yeah, it was a good day to be a stupid boy.
As the years went by, I began to question my ways. Sure many boys are wild children like me, but where did I get it from? My brother even had the tendency to break himself on a downhill bike, or blow things up with friends at 3AM on a Saturday… so we must have gotten those genes from somewhere. But it all seemed a great mystery, as my parents only ever took me on boring hikes, slow bike rides, and rain walks; hardly conducive to my reckless tendencies.
Then, on a family backpacking trip, it started to make sense; the confusion of my youth… my insanity budding under the gaze of my well-to-do middle aged parents... it all became clear on just one trip. On this family backpacking adventure, we would go on day hikes early in the morning. To get to the trailheads we had to make our way to the bottom of a 200 foot waterfall. The path down was a hair-raising- one might say life threatening- challenge. It was nothing more than dusty steps carved into the rock face, with chains dangling alongside the precarious staircase.
As I scrambled down excitedly, I noticed my mom following close behind; holding onto a chain with one hand, her camera in the other. She proceeded in this fashion down all 200 feet of vertical path, without a hint of fear, or a single sign of putting her camera away. She made her way down that “trail” about as quickly as I did, without the use of her right hand. I must say, though, she got some really nice shots.
Even my dad revealed his reckless side. I found a rope swing that swung over a 10 foot waterfall, where you then plop harmlessly into a pool of water. As I was getting ready to swing in for the third time, my dad approached me at the starting rock, holding a length of rope, with a glimmer in his eyes. I could tell by the look in his eyes he wanted to make the jump a little more harmful.
Essentially, his plan was to wrap the rope around my stomach, and pull me back and up, sending me further and higher out over the river. When he let me go, I swung up about 15 feet higher than before, and so far I almost hit a rock jutting out from the opposite bank. It’s a wonderful feeling to discover that you aren’t necessarily some wild youth; a product of a society filled with daredevils and violence. It’s good to know you can still blame it all on genes. I’m the normal one; ask my parents about being crazy.