Pogopalooza

My mother loved to jump on the pogo stick as a child and spent many happy hours jumping away the summer. This memory was strongly triggered recently when she went into a store and saw pogo sticks for sale. Not just the small pogo sticks she remembered from the 50's but pogo sticks of all sizes. Some for children and some big enough for adults. The kid in her wanted one. Rationally, she knew it was a little crazy but she left the store with three pogo sticks covering the range from young child to full grown adult. These are the toys that my parents showed up with at my house last week.

Dad has been practicing at home. Working on his technique and slowly building up the number of consecutive jumps that he could execute at once. When he arrived at our house his record was 225 jumps. He gave us a great demonstration of technique. Jump onto the platform. Pull up on the handles as you jump to keep good contact between the feet and the pogo stick. Grip the pogo stick with your knees to keep yourself steady. With some instruction, the kids were ready to give it a try. Steven was on the large, adult sized pogo, Sarah was practicing on the mid-sized stick, and William started off on the lightweight.

Steven caught on quickly. The years he spent honing his skills on stilts certainly paid off. Sarah took a little more time catching on and having a steadying hand at her waist helped her to maintain her balance as she got going.

William kept on trying until he got it. Both Rachel and Geral were eager to try jumping but had a lot of trouble since neither of them weigh 40 pounds yet. They weren't heavy enough to compress the spring as they jumped so we had to hang on to them and bounce them ourselves.

Lauren finally came outside to give it a try too. I myself took a turn jumping and got up to 25 consecutive jumps. By then I was sweating in the hot muggy air and since I don't like to sweat, I was happy to watch the kids enjoy themselves.

The kids went out and practiced each day that the grandparents were here with the pogo sticks. Steven got good enough that he thought he could double his grandfather's record which he did. Then he thought he would triple it, which brought him close enough to 1000 jumps that he decided to keep on going to that nice round number. So that is the current record on the pogo. As the grandparents travel the country bringing pogo fun to their grandkids, we will see how long the record holds.