Virgil and the Pogo Stick

The Selective Living in Later Years Trailer Park doesn’t cater to the plaid-clad, pants pulled up to your ribcage crowd. It boasts that a carefully chosen selection committee painstakingly picks each resident based on criteria preferred by the social elite--hand-picked, well-bred neighbor after neighbor. To this day, nobody is quite sure how Virgil and Hester O’Brian made the cut. Nevertheless, they are denizens of the aluminum paradise where rock gardens prevail, and awnings are a must.

Hester and Virgil, who had recently celebrated 45 years of marital suffering, seemed secure with their lot in life, that is, until Monday, June 07, 2021. Monday had been a big day for Virgil; he turned 65 and retired from his job as a hearse driver where he carted the dead to their final resting place with mourning family members trailing behind him in cars heavy with sorrow. To celebrate, Virgil went down to the big box store the next town over and bought himself a pogo stick—the Deluxe Spingo-Matic. It was deep red and shiny chrome with red, white and blue tassels hanging from the handgrips. The spring made a wonderful “sproooong” noise with each jump. Virgil was a happy man. The very next morning he started training to set a world record for pogo stick jumping —stickin’ for those in the know.

Prior to this, the most spontaneous Virgil had ever been was when he switched from Rolaids to Tums. Hester was not pleased with his metamorphosis. She rather enjoyed having the trailer to herself all day and spending her evenings sitting next to Virgil in matching mauve recliners staring at the TV.

Now she had “SUPER VIRGIL,” who daily practiced stickin’ for hours. If the sproooong of the spring wasn’t annoying enough, Virgil felt the need to announce every successful bounce by shouting out what his count was. After practicing he did floor exercises until he could barely move. For Hester the Soap Opera Channel lost its fantasy appeal with Virgil panting, grunting and groaning in front of the screen. She was not happy.

On one such unhappy morning Hester slammed open the trailer window and forced most of her 5’3 225-pound body out the window and screamed, “God dammit Virgil, it’s 6 o’clock on a Sunday morning. Knock that racket off.”

“In, 101, a, 102, minute, 103.”

“You’re a crazy old man. A damn fool. Senility must run rampant in your family,” Hester shouted and pulled herself back into the trailer only to emerge a few minutes later vivid with Virgil’s complete lack of responsibility. “Virgil, have you seen the trash? It’s a mess.”

“I’ll, 165, do, 166, it, 167, later,” he said, his tall thin frame bobbing up and down.

“We could be dead by the time you get to it. The amount of trash that is there could bring in rats. Rats with fleas. Fleas, Virgil, fleas. We could be responsible for starting the plague.”

“Later, 173.”

Hester was a tad obsessive about cleanliness. The trash had to be emptied every day even though it echoed inside from lack of debris. The trashcan was scrubbed every Sunday, not just scrubbed but also soaked with bleach, scoured with cleanser, sprayed with disinfectant and finally lined with a deodorized trash bag. The toilet cleaning ritual was even worse. Suffice it to say that rubber gloves and a hazmat suit were involved.

Hester was now perched so far out of the window that she clung to the curtains to keep from falling out. Her face was blister red, her lips snarled and her teeth bared, the two upper front teeth were dotted with remnants of Lush Coral Reef Island Sun Lover Caribbean lipstick. 

“Now!” she spat.

Virgil kept his vigil on the stick and continued bouncing and counting. He had more consecutive jumps than ever before, and there was no way he was about to stop. Hester glared at him, and he grinned back at her, the tassels on the handgrips blowing in the breeze.

Suddenly, a seething, out of control Hester made a noise. It was a sound Virgil had never heard before. It was a loud, sharp yelp akin to someone holding a poodle up to a microphone and biting its butt. Shocked, Virgil leaned too far forward on his pogo stick, and then tried desperately, but uselessly, to recover his balance. He jumped another three times, getting more horizontal with each bounce, before he fell on his face.

“Virgil,” Hester yelled and with the force of the effort exerted by her diaphragm, she shot out of the window. Unhurt, she got up and ran to her husband. “Ran” is a relative word, after all Hester is a rather large woman and she did have to cross the rock garden barefooted while trying to avoid all the little gnomes and figurines she had decorated the space with. “Are you alright?”

Virgil already on his feet shouted, “That was the best I have ever done. I’m on my way to huge success, and all you can think about is that damn trashcan, which by the way is clean enough to bathe in. There will no Guinness Book of World Records, no news crews, no Jimmy Fallon.” He stormed into the trailer leaving the pogo stick in the driveway.

That night, and for the next three, it rained. On the fourth night, Hester was overcome by guilt. In the driveway, lying in a puddle, slightly illuminated by the porch light, was Virgil’s dream. The poor guy had spent most of his adult life surrounded by death and grief and his happiness was rusting in the driveway. Because she knew she would be haunted by that image for the rest of her life, Hester sloshed to the pogo stick and brought in inside.

In the trailer she laid down a tarp and went to work with chrome polish, rust remover, wax, and lubricant for the spring. She even blew dry the tassels. It took almost two hours, but that pogo stick looked like new.

Feeling exonerated, she went to bed only to return to the living room 15 minutes later. She slid her hand across the shiny pole with the clean footrests, and sniffed deeply while floating her nose over the freshly oiled spring. An unfamiliar glint captured her eyes. Fanfare rumbled in the back of her mind. She could see herself shaking the hands of dignitaries, ambassadors, and royalty, posing with celebrities, endorsing a special line of stickin’ shoes and signing a contract for a beer commercial. She was happy.

The next morning Virgil awoke to find Hester bouncing around the driveway shouting out her count.

“Three, 4, darn I have to start over,” she shouted as she faltered. “This is way harder than it looks. Maybe you can give me some tips.”

“You have to practice getting your balance first,” Virgil said gently. “Try to stand on it a couple of times.”

Hester managed to balance for a few seconds at a time before lurching to the left or right.

“Okay, now put one foot on the pad and hop on with the other foot. Start hopping. Goooooo. You got it.”

“I got 10 in a row,” Hester said panting. “I’m going to try again, 1, 2…”

“Are you ready to try it one-handed?”

“Are you kidding? You can do that?”

“I’ve even done it with no hands,” Virgil said standing a little straighter than normal. “You have to get your rhythm going and hold the pogo stick with your knees.”

“I guess I picked the perfect coach,” Hester said.

“I’m going to try it backwards next.”

“Virgil, don’t be a daredevil. I don’t want to have to take you to emergency room.”

The two took turns bouncing around the driveway for most of the afternoon and briefly returned to a time when their relationship was new, and every minute together made their hearts race.

The next day, Virgil was forced to go out and by another pogo stick. He also picked up two helmets with flames on the side and four each of elbow and kneepads. Together the couple began training for the team pogo stick jumping record.

Soon 45 years of habitual existence together slowly crept back into their behavior, and they returned to their arguing ways, but it wasn’t as angry as it once was. It’s not easy being mad when you are bouncing along the street with your spouse besides you.

“You, 28, left, 29, crumbs, 30, on, 31, the, 32, counter, 34, again,” Hester said with her boobs and general girth flopping up and down.

“I, 66, left, 67, them, 68, for, 69, the, 70, ants,” Virgil said with his thinning hair wilting to his head.

“What,” Hester yelled as her stick pitched to the side and she was forced to put her foot on solid ground. “Damnit, Virgil, I was going good there.”

“You, 81, could, 82, jump, 83, better, 85, if, 86, you, 87, shut, 88, your, 89, yap.”

“Oh, go stick yourself,” Hester said and waddle-jogged to catch up to her bouncing companion. “Want to race around the block?”

Much to their neighbor’s dismay, to this day Virgil and Hester are still trying to set that record, the trashcan gets fumigated every Sunday, and Hester falls out the window once a month or so, and the carefully chosen selection committee of the Selective Living in Later Years Trailer Park is painstakingly looking for another job.