“Due to the extreme living conditions, police removed the 5-year-old girl, along with her 6-year-old brother from the house and were placed into protective custody.”

All I can imagine is police saving a little girl and boy, and then being carted away, protesting.

“But… we have to take care of those kids!”

“That’s all fine well and good, sir, but you have to come with us for now - we’ll protect you.”

“Dammit, Harvey! I have a gun, same as you. We did a raid together last month.”

“Can’t be too careful. That girl might be dangerous.”

I have a minor secret. I’m supposed to be this adventurous person, but until this weekend I had never ever done a flip on a trampoline. And that’s because I wasn’t an adventurous child. I’m going back and fixing all that now.

The thing about being 22 and having never ever done a flip, is that the human body gets comfortably used to a certain set of orientations, and resists sudden changes to those orientations, no matter how short lived.

Twenty-two isn’t exactly old and set in your ways, but I still found myself completely unable to pitch myself forward or backward on the huge swath of trampoline at the trampoline place. It was kind of pathetic, really.

*Jump* “One”

*Jump* “Two”

*Jump* “Three…”

*Stumble* “Just kidding…”

So a couple of us decided that it would help to crouch on our ankles and try front and back flips from there. Once I got the motion down, I reasoned, I would go halfway up to a squat and try from there.

Part 1, executed great. “Oh, so that’s how that feels. Ok, that’s not so bad.” After that I went straight to front flips and even got up to three in a row. After that I get dizzy and start stumbling around like a cat with stuff tied to its feet.

But backflips… well, throwing yourself on your face when you know you can catch yourself is one thing. Backwards into the unknown is much harder, even when you know intellectually that the ground is bouncy and forgiving. So on to part 2!

Part 2 is the tortured metaphor in all this. Trying to do a backflip from a squat, on a trampoline, is ridiculous. But I didn’t realize that until I was in the air, sudenly noticing I wouldn’t clear the “ground,” and flopping like a dead fish around an unfortunate pivot point: the back of my neck.

So of course the lesson is “commit to something fully or you’ll screw up.” On the other hand, realizing that the worst failure had already happened (landing on my neck and screwing it up somehow is a huge fear of mine, as I’m sure it is for most people) I pretty much backflipped immediately after it stopped hurting, and didn’t stop until the attendants kicked us out.

On the third hand (it was a freak accident ;) ), my neck is much sorer today than yesterday, and I realize I could have hurt myself much worse. Sometimes it’s hard to anticipate the full consequences of failure until well after it has happened, and running blindly into the breach thinking you’ve already had the worst of it is not so good.

On the fourth hand (can I borrow yours? I’m out of hands…), my somersaulting friend never did achieve any sort of flip.

I guess there was a semi-dramatic conclusion to my bartending job after all. One that really makes me wish I’d sued them, though. There’s been a big fat “for sale” sign on the side of the building for months. Then, a bit fat “sold” sign.

Now the inside is being gutted. It no longer is a bar. I don’t know if the owner still lives in his crappy apartment above the place, and I don’t know if the strip club is still a strip club - maybe it is, and maybe the owner owns it. But he lost the front, out of his own stupidity, flakiness, and stinginess.

The reason I wish I’d sued: I didn’t want to take them to court for unlawful termination, because they would owe me a mandatory minimum of $5K. I knew that would drive them under, and the place is a safe haven for everyone whose life is kind of a mess and who’s trying to be better.

But they lost the front at least anyway. So really I should have just taken the money and split it up among whoever worked there at the moment. Oh well. Either way, the bar is dead.