Aaron's concussion

After a few years in Montpelier, a new family, the Patterson's, moved in on the next street over. If I remember correctly, Bro. Patterson was the principal of the new high school. They had a few kids around our age. I remember they had a younger boy named Gabe, a boy Aaron's age, and an older girl and an older boy. They also had a trampoline.

I don't remember the rules about the trampoline. I remember that there were a lot of families that put limits or enforced rules about trampolines after John Vermaas did the splits on a slippery trampoline and ended up in a body cast - or was that cast from the time he took a nose-dive off his mom's bike when he was taking it down M-hill? Whatever it was (the trampoline incident may not have been John at all) - some of the families removed their trampolines entirely after the accident.

At any rate, Aaron ended up on the trampoline with the Patterson girl, who was at least a few years older than him and probably outweighed him by 50 lbs or more. The story goes that she bounced Aaron, he did his own nose-dive and came down head-first on the trampoline rail - knocked out cold.

He ended up face-down, gripping the grass. I remember having him home, saying a prayer, hoping he would be alright, knowing how serious the situation was, and still thinking it was funny that he didn't know his own name, or where he was, or any number of other mundane questions that we would ask him, and he would answer with some random response. I guess I didn't take things too seriously when I was that age.

Obviously, we were all very happy that Aaron ended up being OK.