If I ever win the lottery, I’ll start making some dreams come true. My dreams. One of my dreams is to lay out a bunch of trampolines, one after the other, all the way from my house to where I work. That would be so awesome. Getting up for work every day would be such a thrill, so full of excitement. I’d probably get going much earlier every day simply because I’d be so pumped to walk out the door and climb up on that first trampoline. Boing!

And I’d be off. The logistics of this whole operation would probably be pretty extensive. I’m sure I’d have to do a bunch of preliminary work. For example, I’d have to figure out for starters the distance I can cover in just one trampoline jump. I’m guessing it’s something like five feet, six, really, I have no idea, I’m just making up numbers. But how would I figure that out? It’s not as easy as just jumping, because what if I overshoot the test jump? I’d land on the ground and break my pelvis, maybe worse.

And then, think about it, say I do manage to jump five feet or six feet across on that first jump. My job is about three miles from my house. I think it’s safe to assume that after the first mile, while I’d still be having the time of my life, I’d naturally get a little tired, and so the lengths of each jump might get shorter, meaning that, obviously, as the route progresses, the trampolines will have to be closer together. Again, how do you figure all of that stuff out?

One solution might be to just keep the trampolines a little closer than I might need them to be. This would ensure that I don’t miss any jumps. Because if they’re too far apart, I won’t make it, and again, I could wind up seriously injured. Trampolines are tons of fun, but unless used correctly, there can be a huge potential for danger.

That being said, I’d prefer not to err on the side of caution. I’m really looking for that pure trampoline thrill, that rush of adrenaline that can only be achieved by jumping as hard as you can. And when I land, I expect to land on the next trampoline. And so and so on all the way to work, even flipping and spinning when I really get the hang out it.

As I’m typing this all out, I’m thinking of some more logistical challenges that I hadn’t thought of before. Like, how am I going to make sure that nobody else uses my trampoline network while I’m not there? It’s not that I want to be completely selfish. It’s just that, face it, this is a huge city. If I start letting one person use my trampolines I’ll eventually have to let everybody use them. And then how would I get to work? What if I open my door to head out one day and it’s so overrun with trampoline traffic, everybody’s double jumping and stealing bounces, and then I show up late?

If I’m late even once, I can just see it, my boss will say something like, “Well look who finally showed up to work. You know Rob, you win the lottery and you think that you don’t have to show up on time anymore? That you’re better than everybody else? You’re fired.” That would be terrible, not to mention a huge waste of money, seeing as I’d probably have spent the majority of my winnings on the trampolines, on getting permits from the city, on figuring out of all that distance like I was talking about earlier.

And now I’m supposed to get a new job? And what if this new job’s farther away. Am I really going to go through the hassle of setting up an entirely new trampoline trail? And now that I’m thinking about it, how are these things going to hold up in the winter? What if it starts raining? What if that rain turns into ice? Will the trampolines still be bouncy or will they shatter upon contact?

And also, what if it keeps raining, and lots of homeless people start hanging out under the trampolines, and they get comfortable, so comfortable that when the sun finally comes out again, they refuse to leave? And I’m bouncing to work one day and I wind up jumping right on some guy’s head. What if he dies? Am I going to be held liable? Will the judge send me to prison or will he just take away my trampolines?

I know that there’s a lot to consider here, and yeah, it sounds crazy, but I’d still do it. If I win the lottery, I’ll still build it. Because, come on, just think about how awesome it would be, you’re at work and they hire a new guy, and you guys are all standing around the water cooler, talking about this and that, and you’re not really friends, you’re all coworkers, and so conversation can get pretty banal, and it’s not long before somebody asks the new guy where he lives, and how’s the commute, and what train do you take. And then everybody else in the circle feels compelled to offer their residence and their train. And finally it would come to me, or it wouldn’t even come to me, I’d skip somebody else’s turn and jump right in, because I’d be so excited, I’d just be like, “I won the lottery and built a series of trampolines from my house to right here and I get to bounce to work everyday and it’s awesome!” and everyone would kind of roll their eyes, like Jesus, every day with the trampolines. But I wouldn’t care how many people roll their eyes, because it would just be a sign of how jealous everyone else is, and why can’t I just let them try it out once, just one of the trampolines, come on, just the one closest to the office. Would that be too much to ask?