ArcaMax

I hate trampolines.

Not because I consider the weird faces you make in midair unbecoming, not because I have a problem with spring-based athletic activities and not because I'm an enemy of fun in general.

I mostly blame my hatred on my kid's friend -- or my kid's friend's dad, to be more accurate.

The friend is a good kid, and a real boy's boy, in every stereotypical sense of the phrase. He's a runner and a climber and a jumper, and he and my son were pretty good friends in kindergarten (as much as two 5-year-olds can develop a bond that extends beyond school walls).

And that friendship is why I met the boy's dad, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, at a playground near both of our houses.

We chatted while the boys played, clambering up, around and over the playground equipment with a reckless abandon known only to children. The talk turned to the way we feel watching our kids take physical risks, and I marveled that he was OK watching some of the gravity-defying moves his son was trying out on the park.

"I get too nervous sometimes," I said, admitting that I even had turned down an invitation for my son to go to a birthday party at a trampoline park.

"Oh, I never let my kids go to those," he said quickly. "Some of the injuries I've seen ..."

There he trailed off.

I looked over at the man's son, who was rapidly ascending the chain-link fence around a tennis court to get atop an 8-foot-high storage shed attached to it. I looked back at the doctor, unfazed, as he yelled out a weak "be careful" to his kindergartner, who waved his dad off dismissively.

This guy couldn't handle the fear of his kids being at a trampoline park?

If a person who knew so much more about the topic than I did -- someone who apparently had a much higher tolerance for his children in danger than I did -- well, if he didn't let his kids go to trampoline parks, they must really be bad.

I used that doctor's words as an excuse for years to keep my kids away from trampoline parks, but it's been getting tougher lately to hold down the fort. My boys are older, for one thing, and it's harder to get them moving around in the winter.

Plus, my stance has done nothing to persuade my husband that I'm not a helicopter mom who would wrap her kids in bubble wrap if they would only stand still long enough.

I've been trying to loosen my grip on my children, as they get older, and I consider when to tear down some of the walls I've built to protect them. My kids are careful themselves, reluctant to take many risks, and I worry that some of my talk about danger has penetrated a little too deeply into their subconscious.

"That's not safe," my kids will sometimes say in a voice that sounds uncannily like my own.

So when my younger son really wanted to go to a birthday party at a trampoline park, I reconsidered my stance and reluctantly agreed.

When we got there, he ran off immediately to the most dangerous-looking section of the facility. I tried to watch him without dragging him away by the scruff of his neck, but the joyful look on his face couldn't compete with the way my heart lurched each time he took a weird bounce. When the birthday boy's mom offered to watch him and let me go run errands, I eagerly took the out.

When I got back to the trampoline park an hour later, uncommonly relieved that I hadn't had a call about a traumatic head injury or severed fingers, my son was having so much fun I had to virtually pull him to the car to go home.

I sighed in relief as we drove away, feeling a little proud that I'd managed my fear without intruding on his play and feeling a lot lucky that he'd made it through without so much as a sprained wrist.

A couple days later, when he woke up in the middle of the night with a fever and sore throat, I realized that he'd hadn't escaped unscathed after all. All the trampoline safety protocols in the world couldn't have protected him from hand, foot and mouth. Children are disease vectors.

And even a pediatric orthopedic surgeon can't keep his kids away from those.

FDR said that the only thing to fear is fear itself. But for my money, you can add both trampolines and germs to that list. And the only defense against either one is good luck.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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