Grown Man Battles Inner Demons After Spotting Unused Trampoline at Kid’s Birthday Party

By Nina J.
The Witless Wire

Brandon Keller, 38, arrived at his coworker’s kid’s birthday party with every intention of being normal. Eat a cupcake. Compliment a balloon arch. Maybe clap when a child successfully hits the piñata. But what he wasn’t prepared for—what no adult man truly is—was the trampoline.

There it stood in the far corner of the backyard: a gleaming, netted monument to joy. Untouched. Unoccupied. Taunting him like a siren in spring-loaded mesh.

“Look, I’m not saying I will bounce on it,” Brandon muttered, hands in his pockets, eyes fixated. “I’m just saying if I did, I’d stick the landing. I used to be able to do front flips, back drops, double knees… I wasn’t just bouncing. I was soaring.”

He grew up with a trampoline in his own backyard and said entire summers passed in midair. “We used to do tournaments. Dismount contests. My cousin broke his wrist trying to double-backflip off the garage onto it. God, those were the days.”

But now? He’s a homeowner. A CPA. And hasn’t exercised regularly in years.

At 2:14 p.m., with most kids distracted by a magician who kept mispronouncing “abracadabra,” Brandon began to pace. The trampoline remained vacant.

“I keep replaying the possibilities in my mind,” he said. “I walk over casually. I bounce a few times. Just low-impact. Maybe a seat drop. Nothing flashy. Just enough to feel again.”

But then he pictured the optics: a lone adult male launching himself skyward in slow-motion, hair whipping in the wind, cargo shorts slightly askew, as a room full of juice-stained six-year-olds look on in horror and confusion.

“No one wants to see that,” Brandon admitted, staring into his lemonade like it held answers. “Especially not their parents. Especially not after last year’s incident with the slip ‘n slide.”

“He’s been looking at that trampoline for like… 40 minutes,” said party host and coworker Jennifer Baum, whispering behind a party napkin. “I think he’s trying to psych himself into it. Or out of it. I can’t tell. He keeps muttering about ‘form.’”

At one point, Brandon cornered another guest, Tyler Fong, near the cooler.

“Tyler,” he said, trying to sound casual, “wouldn’t it be hilarious if the adults started using the trampoline?” He let out a shaky chuckle, then sipped his lemonade with the wide-eyed intensity of a man hoping someone else would say it first.

“It felt like he was fishing,” Tyler later said. “Like, if I agreed, he’d be like, ‘Cool, let’s do it right now.’ But I just laughed awkwardly and said, ‘Haha yeah, I think I’d tear something.’ And he looked genuinely disappointed.”

Jennifer said Brandon’s intentions became even clearer when he started probing the legal and moral parameters of bounce access.

“He leaned in and asked, ‘Hey, I mean… I know it’s for the kids, obviously, but… is it like… only for kids?’ Like he was trying to lawyer his way into a bounce loophole. I told him it technically isn’t illegal, but emotionally? Absolutely.”

As the party wound down and kids began grabbing their goodie bags, Brandon stood near the trampoline one last time. He rested a hand on the padded edge.

“Maybe someday,” he whispered. “When the timing’s right. When society’s ready…and when my HMO covers trampoline-related incidents.”

He then turned and rejoined the other adults, having proven—at least to himself—that restraint, too, is a form of strength.

But according to Jennifer, he wasn’t quite done.

“Before he left, he casually asked if we had any summer travel plans,” she said. “Then he offered to housesit. I told him we weren’t going anywhere. He looked disappointed and asked if we usually take the trampoline with us on vacation. Like it folds up and goes in the overhead bin or something.”

She paused, then added, “If I come home and find footprints on the trampoline, I’m not saying anything. I’ll just let him have that.”