The Bounce House

“Use the Fork Luke” was written in red icing across the half-sheet chocolate cake that was decorated with plastic miniatures of X-Wing Fighters, the Millenium Falcon, and the Death Star. Having parents that were avid Star Wars fans made the inscription an inevitability. There had been much debate about which birthday would be “the” Star Wars birthday, but no debate that there would in fact be one. In the end it was market forces and Luke’s enthusiasm for Rey that decided the matter.

For the group of young kids, the cake was a marvel to behold. It drew them in with the gravitational force of a black hole. Torn between the desire to pluck the figures from the cake and the urge to swipe their fingers across the rich, chocolate frosting, they could barely contain themselves as they orbited in groups of two and three, eyeing the cake with singular purpose, and peeling off to rejoin the formation that was currently in the bounce house engaged in a full-on battle for the existence of humankind.

From the outside, the walls of the bounce house contorted and bulged with the bodies of children as they were flung hither and yon, like popcorn. At times, one or two would fall in the corner, their combined weight nearly bringing the wall in contact with the ground. It wasn’t altogether clear if it the pump and generator were up to the task of keeping the structure inflated and the machinery groaned whenever the children bounced in harmony, forcing air upstream into the pump whilst it labored to counteract the pressure with its small gas-powered engine. But inevitably, and fortunately for the children, the walls snapped back to vertical as their little bodies regained balance and returned to the more forgiving and buoyant center.

It was difficult to leave the bounce house with any sort of grace, instead, it would periodically eject one or two of the children, depositing them on the ground as a candy bar might drop from a vending machine into the tray below. More than once a child would emerge in tears, rubbing their heads from an apparent collision with a fellow bouncer. In such cases, first aid was quickly dispensed in the form of a juice bag, sealing the wound, and preserving the precious remaining oxygen that would otherwise have been expended on screams that would never be heard in the vacuum of space. Conversely, reentering was fraught with danger. It required a leap of faith and much courage to stick one’s head into the doorway. Feet, hands, heads, elbows, and knees came from every direction, putting both the entrant and owner of said appendages in a situation of mutual risk.

The adults were blissfully detached from the mayhem. Having instructed the older kids to keep an eye on the younger ones, they gathered their folding chairs as though around a campfire, and with the children on autopilot, they turned their attention to one another, and caught up on all that had happened since they had last seen one another. It would be another hour before they rounded up the kids for pizza, cake and presents, and they let out a collective sigh of relief in anticipation of a few moments to themselves.

No one knows when the precise moment was, but in the Spartacus retelling of it, one of the boys emerged in the bounce house with a piece, or rather a hunk of chocolate cake in hand and smudges of frosting on his upper lip and nose. At that moment, all bouncing stopped immediately and the other children gasped and looked at the boy in disbelief. They then looked around at one another to confirm that indeed, they were not alone in this moment of shared dissonance. Had they missed the cutting of the cake? The singing of happy birthday? Surely not! They had circled the table many times over the last 15 minutes, and the party had clearly not moved to the cake phase.

One of the boys peeked out of the bounce house door and look over to the parents to find them still huddled in their circle. He looked back to the others and, using only hand signals, indicated that all was clear, and that they should proceed quickly, orderly, and above all, quietly out of the bounce house to cake central. They executed a rapid, sequential, and graceful, discharge out of the bounce house in a Stop, Drop and Roll maneuver that landed each perfectly on their feet, and on a direct vector for the chocolate cake. A elderly man walking his dog looked on with amazement as the formation of children, in a most orderly progression, swooped in a counterclockwise direction by the cake, slowing only slightly to snatch a handful of it from the sheet, tuck it under their wing, then round the table and dive headfirst into the bounce house like acrobats with nary a crumb of cake lost in the process. The man looked over at the parents who were clearly having a time of their own, and with a smile, continued on with his dog.

Once inside the bounce house, the children sat calmly and quietly in a circle of their own, wondering at their good fortune as they consumed with great delight the chocolate on chocolate cake with the red frosting. Use the fork indeed.

Things had grown quiet and the group of parents looked at each other curiously at first, then with some alarm. They looked over at the bounce house, then at the table where the remnants of the cake remained. Something had gone terribly wrong, but as they ran towards the bounce house, they could hear giggles, then laughter, and sounds of utter glee. They stuck their heads into the doorway, and looked through the mesh windows of the bounce house and there, to their amazement, saw the children hovering above the floor of the bounce house. Some of them were slowly turning somersaults, some were standing upside down on the ceiling, while some were doing handstands on the wall. And all of them were just so, floating in that wondrous and timeless moment.