Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The House on Parkour Ave

Lukas flew by me in a flash, headed for our living room.  He was a ball of energy with a new found purpose.

After a few long running strides he leaped up, with his feet coming down on the arm of our leather easy chair - before his momentum immediately carried him right off the other side.  Then, once his feet hit the carpet he curled into a roll as he reached the cushion of our sofa, sprung up,  ran the length of it and jumped from there onto our purple easy chair and back onto the wood floor, before again sprinting around the corner into our kitchen with a spin or two thrown in for good measure.  He finished as he had begun, in a flash diving onto the love seat that resided in the extended family room a few feet away.

"How was that?!" he smiled broadly.

"Awesome!" I responded. "But this is how it should be done.  Watch and learn."

And with that I ran gingerly around our kitchen island,  put my shoulder softly into our refrigerator on the other side, spun off of it gaining my momentum as I found a bar stool a few feet away, rolled my backside deftly across it it one fluid motion before doing a 360 degree spin and jumping up with my right foot onto a dining room chair, and pushed off landing with both feet on the ground and arms raised in emotion.

"Parkour!" I shouted.

This was all precipitated by a conversation Mrs. LIAYF had with another mom at a party last Friday night. Apparently there was a third mother who had placed their bouncy young child in a Parkour class and were amazed at the results.

Neither of us had heard of Parkour before.  But at the mention of a new exercise class for a bouncy 6 year old, our interest was obviously piqued.  A quick Google search had returned some video clips of people of all ages doing some amazing acrobatic leaping and climbing.




This looked pretty cool!

It was at about that time that Lukas entered the room, and without much forethought we showed him the video.   At the same time, I had asked the question of my Facebook Dad Blogger group if anyone had heard of Parkour.  Brent from Designer Daddy responded almost immediately that whenever someone mentioned Parkour, he thought of this scene from The Office:




I found this pretty hilarious.

Of course Lukas, having seen the first video started to immediately run around from room to room leaping, and bouncing off every piece of furniture we own.

As for my performance?  It was definitely more reminiscent of the The Office Parkour video I had just watched.  Just not as graceful.

Then, after a few more in house, out of control, acrobatic display's by Lukas, and hearing of another response I got from a fellow Dad Blogger about all the spectacular accidents he'd seen attributed to Parkour over the years, Mrs. LIAYF turned to me with a troubled look on her face and declared:

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea!"

I smiled at her.   "Parkour!" was all I could muster in response.