Bounce Houses

They go by different names – inflatables, bounce houses, moon bouncers.  At our house, we call them jumpy things.  In any event, among the 1st grade boy crowd, jumpy thing birthday parties are the coolest thing around.

It’s easy to understand why they’re so popular.  For a somewhat reasonable fee, you get to host your rambunctious 1st grader and all of his equally rambunctious friends at a location that is NOT YOUR HOUSE.  The kids tear around like maniacs, get exhausted, eat cake and then go home.  High school aged employees monitor the kids, organize everything from the gift pile to the party room setup, keep the kids entertained during cake-eating time, and, perhaps most importantly, clean up after the event.  Meanwhile the parents get to sit around, chat and drink Diet Coke.  All in all, it’s a pretty good deal.

Unless, that is, you’re the mom of a certain 1st grader named Miles.  Because I assure you that if you are Miles’s mom (me), there will be none of this sitting around and chatting.

Miles likes to keep me supervised at all times.  I suppose he thinks that, given the first opportunity, I will bolt from the building never to be seen again.  Being the ever-vigilant, watchful child that he is, Miles never does let me get that first opportunity.

For the first half of his best friend’s birthday party on Sunday afternoon, Miles, like the other kids, ran around the jumpy thing place like a maniac.  The difference between Miles and the other kids was that he was dragging me along with him.  He would literally place me at a designated spot immediately adjacent to the entrance of his chosen inflatable, look me in the eye and say “Stay, Mom!” and then proceed to jump inside and play with the other kids.  When he was finished with that inflatable, he’d drag me to the next, place me again, order me to “Stay!” and proceed.  You get the picture.

Sometimes, if there was a chair near the jumpy thing entrance, he would tell me I could sit.  I was only admonished once for moving slightly from my spot.  After that, he was more specific with his instructions. “Stay, Mom!  Don’t take one step forward or one step backward.  Just stay!”

At a particularly long obstacle course-style inflatable, Miles decided I should wait at the exit rather than the entrance.  He sighed, grabbed my hand and proceeded to walk me to the end of the obstacle course.  When I told him I was pretty sure I could find my way without his assistance he just lowered his eyes and slowly shook his head.  Oh brother.  I knew that my obsessive GPS use around town would eventually catch up with me.

As time went on though, Miles grew dissatisfied with the idea of me waiting for him on the outside.  It would be so much more entertaining for me to join him on the inside.  More entertaining for whom, I wondered?  For me?  For Miles?  Or for all those parents who would be witnessing me clumsily trying to navigate my way around the squishy inflated playground equipment among swarms of pint-sized crazies fueled by adrenalin and an excess of sugar?  I gazed wistfully at my friends sitting on a bench, chatting and drinking their Diet Cokes.  “Come on, Mom!  First, the slide!”

The slide one sounded innocent enough but as I hoisted myself up rung after squishy rung, clutching the nylon handles on each side of the inflatable ladder for dear life, I realized that anything was further from the truth.  One missed step and I would go plummeting backwards down the near vertical incline, probably taking out 8 to 10 kids in the process.  It gave a whole new purpose to my regular strength-training regimen.  

I finally made it to the top of the ladder and crawled my way over to the slide with my eager son.  It was only then that I realized how high up we were.  Right up near the ceiling actually.  So high that there was netting overhead to protect us from, oh, I don’t know . . . falling to our death?  I looked down the “slide” which I now realized wasn’t really even a slide at all.  It was more like a vertical wall that you could bounce against while free-falling to the ground far, far below.

Oh, this was not good.  Not good at all.  “Miles, I don’t really like this slide very much.”  The thing is, I’m kind of maybe, sort of a little afraid of heights.  

“Come on, Mom!  I won’t let you get hurt!”  Very sweet sentiment.  But looking at my scrawny, 45-pound son, I seriously doubted he was going to be a very effective protector.  Oh, this was not good.

I turned back to the ladder but it was now filled with overly enthusiastic rug rats with glazed eyes, all barely containing their excitement at the idea of free-falling to almost certain death.  There was no way they were going to let me get back down using the ladder.  

The drop felt like those amusement park rides where your body goes in one direction (down) while your stomach goes in the other direction (up).  By the grace of God, I made it to the bottom in one piece.  I also survived another slide and the big inflatable obstacle course.  Many, many times.  Because “just one time” is simply not a phrase that Miles is familiar with.  Claustrophobia became a bit of an issue in the incredible sinking inflatable pit of doom but I quickly realized that stating something like “Oh no! I’m a little worried about falling on you and crushing you to death!” while waving your arms around in an unsteady manner is very effective at getting kids to quickly clear a path for you.

It’s actually pretty fun, navigating through all those jumpy things with a bunch of crazy, lunatic kids.  Once you get over the visual of all of the bacteria and germs lurking in that puffy plastic material, which admittedly is a pretty big obstacle to overcome.  It’s a pretty good workout too.  Not that I would have minded sitting on the benches and socializing with the other parents.  But at least it’s helping me justify those two pieces of birthday cake, and also the adult beverages needed to calm my nerves upon my return home.