The Zen of Blowing Up

Baby Julia received an inflatable trampoline and a set of 100 play balls from Janelle and I for Christmas.  It is intended to act as a ball pit and baby corral, a safe area from which The Juje (as we often call her) can throw pre-approved objects in her zeal to increase the overall entropy of the universe.

The three of us repaired to the basement, where we often watch Disney VHS tapes, practice drumming, lift weights, and train with our boxing equipment.  What, you don’t box with your children?  Manyways, there the thing sat, roughly ten pounds of plastic with six separate chambers waiting to be filled with air.  The instructions recommended a low pressure pump, and the only one I own is the one beating in my chest, so I attempted the impossible.  To blow the thing up manually.

Dylan and Julia played quietly while a holiday cartoon blared, correctly sensing the importance of the task at hand.  The first ten minutes or so were heartbreaking, as I blew and blew into the first chamber with no visual signs of progress.  The jump-o-lene is large, however, so I kept at it and wouldn’t you know the thing began to take shape.

My mind fell into a kind of meditative trance over the next twenty minutes as I refined my technique and accelerated the pace of inflation.  Five repetitions of blowing out the contents of my lungs, covering the valve with my tongue, then inhaling the PVC flavored air through my nose.  By the end, I was up to ten “blows” per cycle, and all that oxygen (and plastic) led to some amusing calculations.  It took me half an hour to inflate this 6’8” diameter monstrosity on my own, which seems like a lot, but I could easily have spent ten minutes driving to the store, ten minutes (and $10, equal to an hour of my market labor time) shopping for an electric pump, another ten minutes home, and then finally began the process of inflation.

So did I really come out ahead by doing things the “hard” way?  Or am I full of hot air?