Gratitude

by Anna Bernard

"Hey Fred! How ya doing? I just heard this quote last night and it's been running in my mind...Life is a cement trampoline."
"Naw. I don't think so, Bob. I think it's more like that super rubber material, that stuff they're using now to make Skyballs. You know - you can launch yourself so high, you can see for miles. You're hanging in the air admiring clouds and mountains and a carpet of treetops across the valley like you have no gravitational pull and just when you're feeling absurdly free and happy, the downward plunge will begin. You'll be scared the whole way down and finally you'll hit bottom only to be thrown back up really high again and eventually you'll start becoming desperate to stop the whole up and down cycle thing but you won't know how. You'll be trying to curl yourself into a dense ball of bone and flesh but that will just make you bouncier and finally, you'll just lie prone and go up and down, up and down muttering 'Woe is me' until somehow the whole torment comes to an end."
"Geez, Fred, that is the gloomiest picture of life I've ever heard!"
"Geez, yourself, Bob. A cement trampoline? What does that suggest? Life is one miserable crash with broken bones?"
"Well, I was thinking of it as a joke!"
"Some joke, Bob! I am completely depressed now."
"Okay, Fred, I don't think we should be engaging in light banter so early in the morning when we meet out here picking up our newspapers."
"Yeah, I'm going to go read my paper now and try to cheer myself back up. Geez!"