We all know Santa has a big job. Delivering all those toys to boys and girls on Christmas Eve is a daunting task. Especially if some of those toys need to be put together. So Santa will sometimes recruit mommies and daddies to help with the assembling of those toys that the kids will be playing with on Christmas morning. It can make for an interesting Christmas Eve when “some assembly required” turns into a mountain of assembly required. And sometimes even ol’ granddad is recruited to help out.
A few years ago, the grandkids were getting a trampoline from Santa Claus for Christmas. Santa delivered the trampoline to Ben to be assembled Christmas Eve. (OK, you old folks, don’t be a Scrooge, you know that’s the truth). I asked Ben if he needed any help assembling because I knew it could be a job. Little did I know how much of a job it would end up becoming.
It was a mild and muggy Christmas Eve and it looked like a good chance for rain. Assembling the trampoline outside could turn into a wet mess. So Ben suggested that we put it together in the potato shed up the path from their home. The plan was to assemble the trampoline in the building, put it on the trailer, carry it up to the house, unload it, and then put the netting on around it. It sounded like a good plan to me, and we wouldn’t have to worry about getting wet.
After the kids were put to bed, Ben and I met down at the potato shed. The room was big and the trailer was backed up at the loading dock. So all we would have to do is put the frame and the base together, load it and go. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t.
There may not have been a hundred metal pieces in assembling that frame, but it seemed like it. Of course, it took longer than expected. The instruction book was the length of a novel. Once the frame was put together it was time to put the base on. (You know, the canvas type tarp the kids jump on.) You have to attach the tarp to the frame with springs that go all around the trampoline. That wasn’t easy, especially the final few springs. Now it was finally time to load up the big and bulky trampoline and carry it back to the house. All we had to do was just slide it to the loading dock and onto the trailer.
It sounded like a good plan. Remember that the trampoline was big and bulky? Well, it was too big to go through the sliding metal door of the potato shed. (Forklifts go through there with big boxes of sweet potatoes, but that trampoline wouldn’t fit.) It was too wide. We turned it on the side, it was too tall. We turned it every which way, it still wouldn’t fit. It just wasn’t going through the door. (To be honest, I wasn’t thinking about Baby Jesus at that time.)
We decided we would take it apart enough to get it through the door. The problem was once you tried to take it apart partially, the whole thing came apart. So, the only solution was to take completely down what we had spent a couple of hours putting together, load all the pieces up and reassemble it back at the house. (Nope, I still wasn’t thinking about Baby Jesus.)
It was after midnight when we went back to the house and started the process all over again. (It went faster this time since we already had practice in doing it.) Fortunately, it didn’t rain as we completed the base in the dark using flashlights. By the time we
finished, Ben and I were laughing, but not a whole lot, about the whole mess. (Well, you might as well laugh.)
Terri called around two o’clock that morning, as we were finishing putting the netting around the trampoline, worried that something bad had happened. Nope, just one of those “some assembly required” Christmas Eve stories. And I bet many of you reading this have one, too.