What did we do when we were kids? Did our parents make us play outside, or did we happily go? I remember leaving the house at the crack of dawn, and only returning when the fireflies came out.

But we had lots of friends in the neighborhood. I guess that helped.

When our kids’ friends are not around, they are literally sitting up under us in the house all weekend long. Except for when we kick them outside. There is much crying and gnashing of teeth over being thirsty, and pulleease! can we come back inside? To which we reply, NO. It feels pretty inhumane, especially when Esteban’s already huge eyes get bigger and fill with tears.

They usually find something to do, usually involving mud, and then it’s all good.

Today, I told them to leave the mud alone. Soon thereafter, Imani came in and asked me to help them play jump rope.

Bingo! I’m a sucker for jumping rope, especially trying to learn double dutch. Curtis bought Imani a double dutch rope set a few years ago, and they are the perfect length and weight for twirling and jumping. But when only 2 of the 4 small children know how to twirl and jump, they don’t get very far without 1 more person to help. And the big kids are not thinking about going out and doing jump rope. Unless, of course, I go out first.

So I went out, followed by Yanni, and we twirled for the girls. First we started out on the deck. That was fine for single rope, but the double dutch twirling quickly took over the whole space.

I moved us to the grass. Ever try to twirl rope over tall grass? Talk about resistance! So we moved to the driveway. I had been avoiding the driveway because it is inclined, and there is the street nearby–something I’m very interested in keeping Chanya out of. But the driveway it was, and the pitch of the driveway didn’t affect our jumping and twirling much. I gave the rope to someone else to twirl so I could demonstrate jumping in technique from time to time. Except for all the whining, and people having a hard time taking turns, it was great.

Then Xay came out to tell me the timer had gone off. I was cooking dinner when I was summoned out for jump consultation. I gave my end of the rope to him, and attended to the bread. Xay good naturedly took the reins, but he did try to twirl way too fast for Joy. I remembered years ago when I was trying to learn and teach double dutch that Xay had managed to jump in and jump on one of the ropes in the double dutch pair of ropes. I never could figure out how he could do that, but I thought, the boy has skills–at least thinking skills to deal with this complicated jumping.

I asked him to try it today. Xay protested, saying he couldn’t jump at all, but it didn’t take much persuading to get him to try. He jumped right in and stayed in the rope for 4 jumps–the highest record of anyone for the day.

I still don’t know how he did it. Do you know anything about the physics and mechanics of jumping rope?