She really, really, REALLY wanted her very own trampoline for her tenth birthday. We had our doubts, but her mother said she would be fine with it. So we chose one that seemed the right size, that had the protective net around it, brought it over, and she and her mother set it up, afterward.

It had a lot of use for the first few years. She and her girlfriends thought it was great fun, and became quite adept at its use.

It's almost five years later. She put it together for the first time today on her own, after taking the parts out of storage. The net, she decided, was no longer useful. It irritated her, and she would no longer use it. Her mother agreed, that if she were careful - which this young girl always is, more or less - she could use it without the net. I watched her assemble the rest of it, over the frame. The net discarded.

When she told her best friend, she groaned, and said to our granddaughter that she was herself convinced that the net had, in the past, saved her from some serious injury. A surprisingly sensible comment. But one that our granddaughter just waved off as irrelevant. Her best friend, as it happens, who lives fairly close on another rural property, is a tom-boyish type of acrobatic adventurer. Our granddaughter is not.

Just as well that at age 15 year interest in the use of the trampoline will not outlast the next two weeks by which time its renewed novelty will no longer beckon, but very swiftly fade into boredom.