#82: "on the bounce"

In case there was any doubt, I really love my wife. She's smart, funny, a great mom, and sometimes does really silly things that she should totally know better than doing but does anyway - and it's comedy gold.

She came down to my office space in the basement a few nights ago to say goodnight, as she does every night I'm down here. It's a bit of a mess down here, as this basement has kinda become our random storage for everything area. Every great once in a while I bring Fred down here to listen to me play guitar, and while I'm walking/playing he of course goes through every box of stuff that's at his level.

He's found some of his old things (like his old inflatable baby tub that's shaped like a rubber duck), he discovered the shop vac, and somewhere in the bottom of one of these boxes he found party favors. I guess one time long ago, before we were married probably, Amy threw a new years party that had actual party favors. The only ones left were these noisemakers that you blow into and that have colored fringe a la a pom pom on them. Fred pulled them all apart and then was instantly bored with them.

Another thing that he found that I had to take away was a bag of 12 bounce balls. I'm sure you've had one sometime in your life. They're about an inch in diameter, sometimes they're different colors like a shooter marble, sometimes (as is this case) they're clear with glitter suspended in the plastic. I'm sure you also bounced them, which is exactly what my wife tried to do a few nights ago. She got the first few, and then missed one that went off my fan, one of my guitars, her leg, and bounced across the room. That scored a 7 for creativity but lost major points for difficulty. It was a great laugh.

Watching her bounce that ball around the basement instantly transported me back to my childhood. More specifically, it took me back to the dentist's office.

I don't remember who our dentist was when were really little. Sometime around age ten or so, though, we started going to see a dentist that was a family friend. His office was in a vintage 1950's building; two office wings divided by a common lobby. I don't remember what the other office was, but the dentist's office was the entire right side of the building.

I fully admit (and since I went to the dentist just this past Wednesday I know) that it's impossible not to get bored while waiting to see the dentist. Even I ran out of things that interested me on my phone, but back then we had nothing to occupy our minds. We didn't want to read National Geographic, or Sports Illustrated, or whatever magazine was there. We hadn't brought anything to play with. Luckily, the dentist had a few things lying about for my brother and I.

My brother and I got our checkups done first and were then given each one super-bouncy ball. If memory serves they were just plain pink, but honestly all that matters is that we bounced them off everything. No ceiling tile, light fixture, door/window/opening, chair, or weird dentist machine went without being explored and having the ball bounce off it. We hurled them down the hallway only to have them come rocketing back at us faster than we could catch. This would cause them to bounce off the wall behind us, usually faster than we could turn around, and the cycle would continue until physics took over and finally put the ball at rest. The entire time our mom was getting her checkup we were doing this, making tons of noise, and running about the place as if we owned it, and for a few minutes, we did.

Six months later when we returned for our next checkup, there were no super-bouncy balls. There were no kids toys. I guess we just talked to each other. There was nothing else to do.