I am ungrateful. I'll attribute it to the fact that I'm an only child. I expect to get my way and get everything I want... and generally I do. I definitely believe part of that is simply believing that I will get what I want while Ben rarely gets what he wants because he doesn't believe he'll get it. But that's a post for another day. This post is about being ungrateful.
Ben's aunt, a former nun who essentially moved to Knoxville the first summer William was in this world to help us out and babysit, came up this weekend from Nashville to get William a wooden playground. So as I was researching playgrounds I came upon a trampoline. From that very moment forward, a playground was out and a trampoline was a "must have."
Here's my justification for a trampoline over a playground:
1) They are half the price of the kind of playground Cathy planned on buying. (Cathy is Ben's aunt which, by the way, is pronounced "ant" not "ont")
2) They can be more easily moved if we move houses, which is real possibility if you look at our moving history.
3) They have a longer useful life. For example, I am 32 (almost) and still love to jump on a trampoline but I wouldn't be caught dead on a playground. Okay, so if you know me, I probably would but that's beside the point. I prefer trampolines and kids use them into high school.
4) William and I could enjoy the trampoline together rather than me watch him on a stupid playground. As Ben mentioned, though, it might be good for me not to play with William every second of the day.
5) There are other reasons that aren't coming to me right now but reasons 1-4 should be sufficient by themselves.
Ben mentioned the trampoline substitute to Cathy but she wasn't interested. Of course this made me mad. Cathy has been talking about getting William a playground for a year now so I could have guessed this would happen. Nevertheless, I was mad. I didn't participate in the shopping or the 16+ hours of playground construction over the past two days.
I was mad, mad, mad. And certainly ungrateful for the money and hard work that Cathy and Peter put into that stupid thing in our back yard. I mean this was all about me, right? Oh wait... it's about William but I know he would prefer a trampoline too.
You think I'm going to come around and say that I shouldn't have been so ungrateful or should have been glad just to have it but when you think about the fact that William won't use that stupid thing past the age of 5, it cost an arm and a leg, and trampolines are more fun, you have to reach the same conclusion.
It turns out William likes the playground. I knew he would but still know he would prefer a trampoline. And... William is ungrateful too. After he played on it all night tonight we got in the car and he found a booklet of other bigger playgrounds and said he wanted those instead. I don't blame him. He's like me. He's rational.
