Saturday, July 9, 2011

Jumping On The Bed

My son is obsessed with climbing up on our bed. It takes him a bit, because it's a king-sized bed that sits a bit higher off the ground, but he gets there eventually. Zane stands up once he has climbed his version of Mt. Everest, and never fails to throw both arms in the air in victory.

And then he jumps.

He jumps on the bed at least twenty times in a row. Zane throws himself onto the bed so he can feel his body bounce, and stands up again. Then he throws his arms in the air again, and leaps right off the bed to land on the ground with a distinct THUMP. He giggles, and then he climbs onto our bed to repeat the process, at least until I holler at him about dragging all the bed linens off to one side in his climbing efforts.

When Zane is jumping on the bed, I admit that I sort of wig out. I have visions of bleeding, ER visits, and stitches rolling through my head. And watching him also makes me think of that stupid Mama monkey who allows her five children to jump on the bed and get traumatic brain injuries.

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed,
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"


That stupid doctor never called child protective services after any of those monkey children "fell off and bumped his head"!

It seems like every child I have ever known, including myself, cannot resist jumping on a bed. You put just about any child in the middle of a bed, and within a few seconds that child will be jumping up and down, ruining your mattress. Why this obsession?

Is this genetic? If so, why can't there be a gene that makes a kid pick up all his toys or not leave his clothing dropped all over the floor? It's a known fact that children who pick up their toys live longer. That sort of gene would ensure survival of the species, I think.

Jumping on the bed probably did not happen "way back in the day," because that would have involved jumping on dirt, or sod, or corn husks, or whatever the heck people made their beds out of before electricity. Where's the fun in jumping on corn husks?

I hypothesize without any supporting data that this jumping on the bed thing probably started up when they started to sell mattresses with box springs. Some of those people purchasing those mattresses probably had kids, because during that time everyone probably had at least seventy kids so they would have cheap labor.

It would be natural for any kid to want to explore and experiment with the new item in the house. Soon that explorer would be standing on the mattress in the middle of the bed. Jumping would not seem to be the logical activity to engage in while standing in the middle of a mattress, but it made sense to that first kid to jump.

Who made that first leap into the unknown? Who took that first little hop and noticed the bounce? Which kid bounced so high that they touched the ceiling with their grubby fingers? Who thought that their jump would make them feel they were flying and make them giggle? Who was unexpectedly catapulted onto the harsh reality that is the floor? I'll never know, and that just makes me want to find the author of that rhyme with the five monkeys and punch them in the face every time that song gets stuck in my head. I hate not knowing stuff.

2 comments:

  1. Both of my kids are jumpers. I love it when they jump and giggle together :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I LOVED jumping on the bed when I was a kid....erm, there were 7 of us...often at the same time. They made tough beds those days. XXX

    ReplyDelete

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