Playgrounds

Saturday, November 29, 2008 by Mike Lowrey.

Are kids today safer?

I think so. I believe that we were used as guinea pigs to make the kids today safe.
Think about it… it was due to our broken bones, pain & suffering use of the playground equipment that kids have it good today.

So ponder on this will ya:

When did playgrounds go from metal to plastic?

Was it after the 300,000th kid got a concussion from running into a metal slide?

Speaking of Slides…What’s wrong with metal?

Metal slides after sitting in the sun’s hot rays all day and absorbing enough solar radiation to make their surfaces around 2000 degrees Fahrenheit could easily boil the skin right off a kid. Now that was FUN!

When did sand & gravel stones get replaced with wood chips & rubber foam?

Maybe it was because people were tired of losing toys that their kids buried in the abyss called sand. Wasn’t there something satisfying about the resounding thud you made when you catapulted off of some playground equipment, flew through the air, and slammed into the sand hard enough to knock the wind out of you. Picking yourself up and brushing off the sand from the front of you and spitting out the sand from the mouthful you inhaled? Wasn’t it fun still playing with the sand from the playground when you got home from the sand in your shoes, grains of sand in your underwear, and a fine layer on your teeth?
Was it after people got tired of seeing gravel stones stuck to their kids face leaving beautiful marks after a nice fall?

Remember the Merry go Round:

Remember your friends would keep spinning you and not letting you off until you passed out.
I know it wasn’t just me who wanted to puke after being on this creation from hell  ride after 20 minutes.

And what about all the fun I had trying to  launch myself into space from the swings:

Sure I saw a few skulls cracked open, but it was fun.
You want to know where the MTV show JackAss came from, back then it was just called playing.
And when you came into the house bloody and broken crying; your parents said, “that’s what you get JackAss”.

Kids today will never have that super fun experience.

We could skip one, two, and even three bars with blinding speed. You never tried to skip four or you would hit your head when your arms were stretched parallel to the ground. We would even run across the tops (not for the faint hearted) but woe unto the child who slipped and forgot to dive to the side. Not only did he rack his goods on the bar but then plummets six feet to the ground usually head first.

The first time I saw a friend cry uncontrollably was my boy Juan after falling off of the monkey bars and fracturing his arm.
I saw him later that evening with his arm in a cast & he was enjoying having folks sign his cast. Monkey Bars were the gift that kept on giving.

Safe equals No Fun.

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