1786 Trampoling

Recently I was at a great event, the Lacey Chamber of Commerce South Sound Barbecue Fest. I know, quite a mouthful. They had this bungee-assisted trampoline thing there. It looked cool. It took the inherent danger out of trampolines and allowed folks to do flips without crashing on the springs or framework.
Which put me in mind of my childhood, when we had no such thing. We had spotters.
In my high school, learning how to do flips on the trampoline was encouraged. I never had any problems with that until after one summer when I'd learned to do "full layout" back-flips at the pool. When I came back to the trampoline, full layout flips, at least as poorly as I did them, didn't leave me room to both launch from and land on the trampoline proper.
Or so I discovered midway through my first layout back-flip. As I was upside down at the time, it was quite a sight. I was definitely headed for the edge and frame of the trampoline, and about to nearly geld myself on the springs.
I vividly remember watching the spotters scatter. I landed, shall we say, painfully. Following the maxim "if you fall of a horse get back on and try again," I did. And crashed the same, again with spotters scattering.
Stupid maxim.
Nowadays I'm thinking, what were they thinking? The folks who assigned high school kids to spot. What could they have done anyhow? Poke me in the eye with their fingers, break their own arms and my neck as I came crashing down?
My attempt at early crowd surfing was flawed in many ways. Not least that one or two spotters, even if they didn't scatter, would be unable to arrest my momentum.
But also that baseball isn't the only sport where it's wise to wear a cup.
America, ya gotta love it.