Random thoughts bubble out of nowhere.
Such as:
Are pogo-sticks fun?
Is there anybody out there who has pleasant memories of an hour — or a minute — spent entertaining yourself with a pogo stick?
Because I remember encountering them as a child, and giving them a try. Maybe I was too heavy. But they didn't spring up the way they were supposed to. The pogo stick rider tended to fall over. And abandon the effort very quickly, if one were smart.
Not sure what prompted the pogo stick thought. Some chaotic firing of neurons. The question certainly would have never seen the light of day. But shortly after I had it, I was walking down the block, and saw this pair of pogo sticks set out for the trash. No, I didn't try them. Or take them. Or knock on the door and pose my question to their former owner.
Coincidence, surely. What else could it be? I didn't summon the sticks up. It wasn't foreshadowing. Not augury. The linear universe glancing ahead, warning me through telepathy of the approach of discarded pogo sticks.
But it seemed one of those odd coincidences that some consider fate. You contemplate pogo sticks. And here they are in the living world. I should ponder a bag of money next.
Pogo sticks are a reminder that all the hand-wringing over phones and video games and such. Do you remember how kids passed the time? We twiddled our thumbs — boy, I bet more than one minor pundit has stretch that observation into an entire column. We bounced a tennis ball against the garage. We folded newspapers into boats. And I suppose some bounced on pogo sticks, or tried to.
The history of the toy is complicated, and while on another day I might dive in with a whoop, I think I'll shield you from the minutia on this one, the competing claims as to who first invented it and where "pogo" comes from. We don't have to plunge down every rathole, right? All you need to know is that it was a craze in the 1920s, with Ziegfeld Follies presenting chorus girls on pogo sticks, and came back in the 21st century as a kind of extreme sport.
I don't want to let my own experience blind me. But I just can't imagine the things being fun. Correct me if I'm wrong.
You're not wrong, Mister S. They can be very dangerous. Sixty years ago...in my last year of high school, I knew a girl who was badly injured by one. I laughingly called her "The Pogo Stick Kamikaze Pilot"...but it was no joke.
ReplyDeleteSeveral years before, when she was ten...or maybe twelve...she was trying one out at the Carson Pirie Scott store at Edens Plaza, just off I-94.The spring mechanism malfunctioned, and she was flung upward and outward with tremendous force, and came down right on her face. Which suffered a great deal of damage.
She was still suffering the after-effects when I had a class with her. Her front teeth and her mouth needed a huge amount of reconstruction. Braces were the least of it. Oh, they did a good job, all right, and they gave her sort of a pug nose and she was pretty cute. But you could easily tell that something was slightly off. Liked her a lot. Won her a couple of those oversized stuffed animals at a carnival. But she was already spoken-for.
Her parents sued the store and the manufacturer, and were awarded a great deal of money...at least for 1964, anyway. But she never went near a pogo stick again...and neither would I. They never worked for me anyway. And those things can seriously fuck you up. Trash can was the right place for them.
And, yeah, when I was a kid, and one of my best friends moved to New York, I spent a good part of a whole summer bouncing a ball off the side of the house, and missing him, until Old Yeller came out and made me stop. Then I would go inside--and watch the Cubs lose again.
In my memory of those not so halcyon days, it was a rubber ball and concrete steps, not a tennis ball {too light} and not the side of the building {too likely to disturb an adult...or a dog} Occasionally fun to nab a hot liner right back at the pitcher or snag a long fly ball, saving a possible home run into the street. Could be played alone or with anybody that happened to come along.
Deletetate
It's the lattice of coincidence from Repo Man. Plate of shrimp:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/X4HQyqc-aVU?feature=shared
for me a waste of time akin to hula hoops and jump rope
ReplyDeleteFor me, the pogo stick challenge was trying to get to 1,000 jumps in a row, by correcting my orientation mid-air when starting to lose balance - don't think I ever made it to 1,000.
ReplyDeleteAs I grew and would occasionally try it again, I no longer got enough lift from the springs, due to either my increased weight or cheaper manufacture.
Anyway, I didn't find it a terrible waste of time