The Jump Rope King

I've mentioned this before, but talking to my sister-in-law, Ingrid, is one of the things that really makes me happy. Since she up and moved to Germany (I know, I know...great experience. great for the career. awesome place to live. etc. etc. I still maintain she should have up and moved next door to me) I haven't been able to talk to her as much. Our conversations have slowly dwindled from every day when she was in the USA to about once a week now that she's living in Germany. It's just really difficult to coordinate our schedules for chatting.

On Tuesday I was talking to Ingrid after way too long (the previous Tuesday) and she mentioned that she was reading a book about happiness and how she realized that talking to me genuinely makes her happy - a thought that I reciprocate 100%. She also mentioned that in this book they mention a jumprope Olympics? or something of the sort which prompted her to ask if I had ever heard the story of Martin jumping rope. I immediately said no, but then about two sentences into her telling the story I remembered I had actually heard that story before. But, the story is so good I decided not to tell her I already knew it and listened to it one more time just for a good laugh.

You see, when Martin and Ingrid were in elementary school, they had to do a jumproping unit in gym. They didn't do anything crazy just your basic hold a jumprope, swing it over your head, and jump. NO BIG DEAL.  Well, as it turns out, this was a big deal for Martin and he was on the verge of failing gym due to his inability to jumprope. In order to pass the unit you had to jumprope five times in a row without tripping up. The specifications for passing didn't require any crisscrossing of the rope or crazy shenanigans like that. Just five basic jumps. Martin was having such difficulty with this he was actually sent home with both a letter for his parents to sign stating that he was an unqualified jumper and a jumprope to practice.

This is the part where the story really gets good. Martin, who didn't want to be bested by a silly rope started racticing jumping rope in the front yard at every opportunity. Morning, noon and night Martin could be found out there in front of the gas grill all the time getting better and better. As Ingrid describes it, it was like the Rocky Montage. Because he got good. really good.  He got so good he could out jumprope any kid in the class.

And if you were to give him a jumprope now, well he could probably still do it.