Pogo stick has taken him around the world

PHILADELPHIA — Nic Patino didn’t start pogoing because it was cool. Who would? But when Patino’s dad died in a motorcycle accident a month before his 13th birthday, he pulled an old pogo stick out of his family’s garage and put all of himself into it. Life, he couldn’t control, but the bounce, that, he could master. “When you’re doing this, you have to be absolutely present, so it allowed me to do away with my pain, that grief, and those emotions,” Patino, 23, said. “The pogo stick saved me.” And then, the pogo stick showed him the world.