When our son first began trying to jump it was a very amusing thing. He’d raise his arms and bring them back down. While there was a lot of sleight of hand and misdirection on his part, his feet never left the ground. Over time he’s become better at jumping. It started with raising up to his tip toes and eventually off of one of his feet. These small, but steady progresses towards actually jumping have been fascinating to watch as a human being and even more interesting as the father of the jumping student in question. His first big success was being pulled off of the ledge of a pool into the water. He felt what jumping was: a sort of falling. This began it all. From this one step he’s now (quite literally) taking leaps and bounds. It is as if he has no fear. This fearless quality is both valuable and dangerous, but it is what propels him upward.
As we sat on our living room sofa tonight our son came plummeting down from a great height known as the arm of the sofa onto his unsuspecting parents. Little did we know, as we sat quietly on the sofa, that our son had planned a sneak attack to surprise us both. As we sat, stunned from the 30 or so pounds of flesh that assaulted us from above, we watched as he carefully climbed to the edge of the sofa and stood — teetering with injury on one side and soft cushions on the other — before happily speeding into our laps again thanks to gravity. It is at the moment when my wife and I open our mouths in opposition to this behaviour that I remember myself as a child (much older than our son is now) doing the same things on my parents’ furniture. Such is life.