Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Jaymes visits Bumper Jumpers, mommy gets burned

As a belated birthday gift from his grandmother, Jaymes was treated to a fun day of bouncing at Bumper Jumpers, in Greensboro. I thought that because the gift was belated, it would not be too horrible for the post talking about it to be belated as well.

We’ve been to Bumper Jumpers three times now, I think. The cool thing about it is that parents get to play too- unlike those stupid, incredibly fun inflatables at the fair that grownups don’t get to do because we exceed their silly weight limits. The place is a LOT of fun, although their air conditioning is very minimal and the staff are less than autism-friendly. This was the first time in the last year (I think) that we’d been, and there were a couple new bouncy houses. The coolest one (and naturally, the one Jaymes insisted doing repeatedly) was an obstacle course, styled along the lines of Nascar.

Sadly, these bounce houses are really styled for kids, or at least incredibly bendy skinny people who are in pretty good shape. Did this stop me? Of course not. It probably should have though!

The kids bolted right into the Nascar bouncy, squirming between the pit of little inflate-y squares that constituted the beginning of the obstacle course. I figured I could walk through, by keeping my legs squeezed between the very narrow path between said square things. This was not to be. The space was really too small for adult feet, and served only to bind my legs together and take away what little natural balance I ever had. The result was my best impression of a turtle, on my back surrounded by little inflated squares. No amount of flailing did me any good, so I got the bright idea to squirm snake-style through the rest. At this point, the kids were long gone and there was very little hope of catching up.

Once I extracted myself from part one of the ordeal, I came face to face with a tunnel that would have been plenty tall and plenty wide- had it not been lined with mesh of some sort that made it one heck of a tight fit. Slithering, again, proved to be my only option. Upon reaching daylight at the other end, I could not help but think that this was probably how babies felt as they come into the world. My first view was of Jaymes, paralyzed with laughter at my predicament. That is, until he realized I was not actually stuck. Then he bolted with an evil giggle.

The tunnel opened out to an open area that thankfully was tall enough for me to stand up, and wide enough for me to move. The only issue was the eight to ten foot inflatable climbing wall that loomed above me. Of course my kids (and some very tiny little toddlers that had clambered past my flailing turtle impression earlier) had no issue climbing up there. I think that little children are like mountain goats. Me, not so much.

It was with great effort (and much labored breathing) that I dragged my out of shape, arthritic body up the ladder. Being short of breath after my exertion, I sat at the top a minute to breathe. Neither kid was in sight, they’d long ago gotten bored with my pitiful attempt at keeping up. I wasn’t even exciting enough to laugh at anymore! I decided I needed to hurry up and find Jaymes before he bit a hole in something or assaulted a tiny child (or grabbing some random man to see if he might be wearing a belt) and hopped over the edge to slide down. I kind of expected to have a nice, fun slide down. It was to be the one peaceful, non-exhausting part of the bouncy house. Except apparently, those slides give some nasty rubber burns. Down I went with a WOOOOSH. My arms made friends with the surface of the slide, and I ended up with some very impressive bouncy house slide burns!

Really though, the day was a lot of fun. The kids had a ball, and I got a good workout. I will say that Bumper Jumpers is not exactly arthritic mommy friendly!

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