'My Kids Suck': Angry Dad Sells Neglected Trampoline

First they begged for it, then forgot about it. Sound familiar?

Have you ever given into your kids’ begging and pleading for a new toy which they claim will be the ‘best thing ever’, only to stew in annoyance as it lies abandoned and unloved only a few weeks or months later? If so, you’ll have some sympathy with this unnamed dad, the author of this hilarious Craigslist ad.

A frustrated dad took to the classifieds website in the US to advertise a trampoline he had for sale, in a listing titled ‘My Kids Suck’.

The story will be familiar to many parents: “They begged. Pleaded. Told me how they’d use it EVERY day,” he recalls. The kids even resorted to emotional blackmail: ‘Since I “messed up their lives” by moving them here in middle school, I owed them at least this much. God, dad.’

So, of course, under the pressure of such intense pleading, Dad ‘caved’. At first it seemed like they really appreciated his generosity as the trampoline got plenty of love, however he gradually began to realise how quickly the novelty of the longed-for backyard toy was wearing off.

“That first night they jumped. Then I watched from my window as summer turned to fall and the fall turned to winter…. Spring turned to summer and I watched even still from the window, waiting, just waiting, for someone, anyone, to use that damn trampoline even once more.”

Dad said he had finally been driven to sell the abandoned trampoline ‘after two years of sitting in my window staring out like a creepy old neighbour’, endlessly hoping that his ungrateful kids would rediscover their enthusiasm for this beloved tramp.

And what will he do with his newly-liberated backyard space? He finished up the ad wondering whether to use to space for ‘gardenias or tomato plants or a stockade jail to house three grumpy teenagers’. The last option sounds like it could be handy!