A playground in Montana. A time long ago. I'm the little-redheaded girl that looks as if she's ready to give someone a little help down the slide. We used to polish them well with waxed paper to get even more speed out of them. I found this photo as I was going through a box of my late brothers things, finding a place for them in our home.I remember that day. Big Bro was going to go swing like a monkey from the monkey bars. He was safe. . . for now.
Have you noticed that some the playground equipment has been seriously lawyered up since you and I were kids?
The slides are now about four feet tall and have bumpers and areas of thick soft mulch to fall in (we had rocks). Monkey bars are getting harder and harder to find, and the ones out there aren't exactly high off the ground (oh no, I might fall 3 feet!)
5 comments:
For a second I thought Borepatch was a redheaded girl. That didn't match my mental picture if him!
Our thing was to get on the big swing set, swing until we were about level with the crossbar, and bail out (Eject! Eject! Eject!). :-)
We moved to Phoenix in the middle of winter ('63?), when I was about 10yo. First day during recess, I hit the Monkey Bars. Two or three crossbars, and I was heading for the nurse's station. Burned both hands.
No idea why they had metal construction in the recess area, as none of it was touchable during school hours.
Playground equipment isn't really softer, smaller, and safer. You just grew up and got big so it doesn't look so high, so big, so imposing. I went to a park I grew up near recently. The memory I had was of a 50 foot tall slide.
Reality? I now stand taller on flat feet than its highest point.
Oh, yes, the merry go round - many a scabbed knee from tripping while pushing it and being dragged for a moment before I let go. And a playground that our parents took us to occasionally had a real USAF jet that we could climb all over. I fell off the thing once and WOOMPH! got the air knocked out of me. Funny, though, I seem to have survived all those dangerous parks.
Oh, yeah - it was sort of fun to suddenly get off your end of the see saw when your sister was on the high end...
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