A trampoline is for life, not just for Christmas. Please endeavour to remember this important coda to the annual consumer extravaganza if you are one of the 35.8 per cent of families actively considering the purchase of a piece of bouncy play equipment this festive season.
We at the "A Trampoline Is For Life" (ATIFL) campaign acknowledge that there are many reasons for wanting to own a trampoline. Perhaps you want to get fit, or lower your stress levels, or simply indulge in the certainty of knowing that the full beauty of gravitational pull is right at hand.
But please, stop. Consider. Do you really have the means to care for that trampoline? That innocent piece of backyard hardware has around the same lifespan as the adorable puppy your children desperately want but aren't going to get. That's right. They aren't going to get a puppy, because they're getting a trampoline, and there isn't enough room in the backyard for the both of them – well, not unless the dog actually lives on the trampoline, which will inevitably rope in our friends at the RSPCA if they get wind of your cosy little arrangement.
The conditions in which trampolines are expected to live are rapidly worsening. Housing blocks are shrinking as subdivisions and miserly house and land packages rip the guts out of the quarter acre block. In inner suburbs where space has always been at a premium, the front yard trampoline has become an all-too tragically common sight.
And will your kids continue to love the trampoline? As we at ATIFL like to say: who the hell do you think you're kidding? Those fickle little beasts flitting from loom bands to Furbies to Pokemon without so much as a regretful look back at the consumerist carnage they leave in their wake? Don't be foolish. By September that trampoline will be seeing as much action as the marriage of Liza Minnelli and David Gest.
Nonetheless, our counselling service is wearingly familiar with the full range of pro-trampoline arguments. The sad denial trotting out across the stepping stones of logic: It's Christmas, the time of goodwill, joy and giving; the children want one; life will not be worth living if the miniature harpies do not get one.
But hearken unto us. That trampoline is a Trojan Horse of pain, misery and marital disharmony. Divorce rates spike across Australia at precisely 1am on Christmas morning when exhausted spouses still can't figure out how to affix Pole C with Bolt 3A in a counter-clockwise direction before affixing the safety netting with three thousand handy plastic grips. The slogan for our latest awareness campaign sums it up in three words: World. Of. Pain. And then Santa gets to take all the credit.
We acknowledge that the trampoline will be a rich source of immediate gratification. Squeals of joy will ring out on Christmas morning as small children double bounce each other until the youngest vomits. But then in a few years' time as the harsh Australian climate takes its toll, along with the Schnauzer living on it, that trampoline will be nothing but a twisted hulk of rusted springs and torn netting, the mat simultaneously decaying, yet hanging grimly onto existence with the half-life of nuclear waste. A seasonal memento mori taking up half the backyard and destined to outlive the generations of goldfish, guinea pigs and rabbits buried neatly under the lemon tree. Because pets, they come and go. A trampoline is forever.
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