Brevity by Dan Thompson for June 14, 2021

The best play equipment was the stuff where you had a chance of being maimed or otherwise seriously injured. It made it so much more exciting.

Now it makes sense. I’ve been hearing it wrong all this time.

I guess I remember a little climbing equipment back in the 80’s when I was in grade school; but in the main playground it was a slide, swings, and a merry-go-round.

I think someone banged his head on the monkey bars a little too often to come up with this pun.

Insurance companies and lawyers happened.

Yup, life’s lessons aren’t cheap.

See, what happens when you remove playground equipment from kids that are too stupid to live, you then have these same people as adults “falling for” conspiracy theories. That’s my guess anyway.

Cant have teeter totters, pinches, swings, hanging and other damage. Monkey bars, falls, Cross bars same. Slides, burns and scrapes. Here, stand in this spot and imagine you are having fun. Some places are just eliminating recess all together.

IDK…kids in the 40’s on survived….go figure

We had sections of drainage pipe, about 4 feet in diameter on the inside. Played chase, hide and seek and of course, king of the pipe but climbing on the top. All surrounded by dirt and rock. Now, it’s all safety stuff and soft sand. Kids are wimps.

“I know having a playground on a sandbar is a bad idea but in our defense, when we built it 20 years ago it was 3 miles from the beach!”

“Climb it” change is an existential threat to growing up to be a strong adult.

Back in the 70’s our little tourist town had life guards on the beaches. Thanks to lawyers suing the city we no longer do. Need national laws to start making people responsible for their own actions.

There is a certain truth that it is better for kids to learn balance and all of that stuff on the different toys rather than adults trying to learn it later – kids heal much better, faster and often learn more effectively than adults from such things.

Snowflake parents…stitches, bone breaks, concusssions, torn ligaments… my kids had em all. Didn’t lose any of them.

Litigation.

Where have the jungle gyms and monkey bars gone? Victims of too much litigation in our society, with people expecting others to pay for their own mistakes. Our town has been tearing down park playgrounds, and selling off city park land to developers, because of lawsuits from people who didn’t supervise their kids and the kids hurt themselves (as well as the money – turning liabilities into income).

The first crack of doom that was visible was when the first home owner was successfully sued by non family members over a swimming pool accident – stupid judge and jury. “Attractive nuisance” in deed.

You haven’t lived until you get on a metal slide in your shorts, in the summer’s sun.

Also the swings; go as high as you can and bail out, hit the ground running, hopefully!

Our playground in the 50s had all those horrible things, and we all survived. I still miss the swings, firmly cemented in the ground, with wooden seats smoothed by hundreds of little butts. Plus, we had a monstrous old mulberry tree we called the fairy tree, to play around and climb, right next to the ball diamond.

Ambulance chasing lawyers.

At the old grade school there was a fire escape slide that was about 3 stories tall. Weekends we’d go back to the school, climb up the slide, all get in a wad and slide down. That would scare the —- out of me now.