Pogo sticking is an interesting experience. Everybody's seen the bouncy contraptions in a cartoon, usually as part of a slapstick gag of sorts, but considerably fewer have spent more than a few minutes actually using one.

Pictured: Not actually using one.

It's a shame, because learning to pogo can be a rewarding experience.

My time with the hobby began at some point in middle school when my younger brother got a pogo stick on a whim. Everybody in the Doyle family stood around outside on our front driveway watching him attempt to use the yellow and black spring thing, but it wasn't going so well. We each took turns trying, but whereas the others lost interest fairly quickly, something about the challenge of finding my balance kept me pogoing.

A lot of people think that using a pogo stick is easy; they think you can just jump up on one and start bouncing like some kind of springy stud. But the truth is, those people are dead wrong. Learning to pogo is like those first few tries with using a bicycle, but more vertical, like so:

It requires leg strength, muscular endurance, superhuman balance and the patience of a saint. It requires someone like me.

See, a lot of people would've given up, but not I. I grew in consistency and skill when it came to the springy stick, until I could bounce up and down the block with relative ease

My vertical jump was pretty ridiculous, too. The day came when the thrill of all those trivial tricks began to wear off though, and when that happened, I faced my greatest challenge as a human being yet.

I set out to bounce more than 3000 times without stopping or losing balance. By the end, I was sweating, my legs were sore and I had to wear gloves because on my first few attempts I got blisters on my hands from gripping the handles. I slowly worked up though, gradually improving as I had before, until I finally hit a breakthrough- 3,001 legit hops with legit no stops.

To this day, it's my most excellent achievement. Not acceptance into university, not participation on a D1 college cross country and track team and certainly not something lame like getting my first job. No, I owe the best moments of my life to my pogo stick, and I'd like to think that if my pogo stick could reflect on itself, it would realize that it owed me as well. Together we were unstoppable, and after a long hiatus, I look forward to the day that we ride again.

Off into the sunset probably, like a couple of bouncy bandits.