Pickles by Brian Crane for February 26, 2018

I hardly remember a time going to a playground with my grandparents.

A playground is now a flat space with padding underneath.

I’m glad I was a kid back when we had an actual playground.

Actually, when I was a kid, we wanted swings for our playground, but they were nixed for being “too dangerous”. Now they have swings. But the monkey bars and merry-go-round which we loved so much were taken away because they’re “too dangerous”. We never had a teeter totter and still don’t at the school playground, but there is one at the park.

There’s still the swings.

This comic is so true it’s depressing!

I had a friend who was on the money bars and landed on her head on the concrete. It was a long recovery…. but that kind of thing can happen at home as well for sure.

Didn’t have playgrounds when I was a boy. We played cops and robbers, or US vs Japs or cowboys and indians out in undeveloped land next to our house. We carried sticks, rope, pocket knives, rocks, pretty much anything we could carry (had to leave frogs and snakes out in the grass when we came in … Mom objected to finding them in the laundry.) Amazingly enough, we’re all still alive and none of us has killed anyone.

No, they don’t have all of the stuff we had back in the 70s, since the stuff we had was probably put in back in the 50s or 60s… there was an old playground set at a nearby township hall a few years ago that had all of the old playground stuff like monkey bars, etc. My brother’s kids were all over them because they had NEVER seen “old-timey” playground equipment like that before.

this is so sad . . . :(

So now we have children who are only allowed to have fun by having no fun at all.

There was an article a while back about a school in the UK; the staff couldn’t get the kids to go out and play during recess. They realized the students couldn’t do anything – no swings, monkey bars, or see-saws. They weren’t allowed to play dodge ball (somebody might get hit!), or tag, or even swing rope.

Adults have taken all the fun out of being a kid, just to save a few thousand lives — George Carlin

Dang. I’d give ten bucks to see Grampa Pickles on a teeter-totter.

I may be somewhat responsible, I still remember talking my cousin into standing on one end of the teeter totter while I jumped onto the other. He didn’t go flying as far as in the cartoons, but it still wasn’t pretty

I’m sure that in the days when playgrounds still had all those things, kids did get hurt, but nobody back then said it was too dangerous so let’s remove them so the kids won’t get hurt anymore. By the way, the small park in my neighborhood still has swings and teeter-totters along with some more “safe” items.

Remember the pain when the person on the other end of the seesaw (teeter totter) jumped off when you were high? 70 years on and I can still feel it!

Just don’t get me started on what used to be “Shop Class”.

Too dangerous to have Earl on the playground.

The helicopter parents have landed. On the playground.

Every thing is too dangerous for the children of today, except violent video games, unmonitored access to the internet, being left alone, and most of all growing up in a world with no knowledge of God.

Gotta agree with Pathfinder ! With my Roy Roger’s two-gun holster set, I was the “baddest” cowboy in Northern Washington State in the late ’40’s !We also had the advantage of having an alfalfa field next door and would take a large cardboard box and hide it in there. Made all kinds of different tunnels to get to it and was so much fun.Nowadays, a good deal of the kids hole up in their rooms and play the Xbox thing or whatever and people wonder why there’s an obesity problem with so many of ’em !

Any empty lot would do.

As much fun as we’re reminiscing about the good ol’ dangerous days, I recall my dad & his friends talking about the stuff they’d do as kids – pennies on the railroad tracks… most of which my grandmother never knew about!

As a kid my most dangerous activity wasn’t swings, monkey bars or even jumping off cliffs. No, it was building forts out of old lumber. Seems like I was always stepping on a nail. Which meant a trip to hospital for a Tetanus shot. Then the rest of the afternoon looking for nails sticking up so I could either pull them out (for reuse) or hammer them over.

A lot of playgrounds nowadays are covered with rubber matting made from old tire mulch, so that the ground is soft for kids to fall on. On the other hand, the tire mulch is full of toxic chemicals, but, what the hay?

The playground in my neighborhood has wood chip mulch instead. I think it is soft enough, and no toxic chemicals.

Kids have no idea what can and cannot hurt them, and what is safe to do or dangerous, because they never have a chance to try things out for themselves. Some kids used to get hurt and badly, too, but most of us only got banged up enough to learn the limits.