What's a playground?

Growing up -- I ran though the woods, played in creeks, built dams, and did many things of a similar nature. I knew deer trails better than the deer.

I could cross to a destination on foot faster than a friend could get there on a bike.

I never had an injury that required hospitalization.

As a kid we also played games in the street and our yards, but with perfectly manicured lawns and expensive cars, no kid dares throw a ball in the street and, God forbid, hit a car or have to retrieve it from someone's bushes. I have a park across the street and my son goes often to play handball. My daughter goes there with her friends as well. I don't worry about the equipment. Crossing the busy intersection worries me more than tham falling off a swing or tripping on the cement.
Lenore is on the money often. This Sunday she is trying to launch a day where parents take their kids to the park and leave them there. I'd say bravo except that she lives in Jackson Heights and is taking them to Central Park. There is a huge difference between Jackson Heights and the upper west side. Not only is she now adding a subway ride, but she's taking them from an area with some issues. That's hardly promoting the idea that she's endorsing which is getting local kids out of their homes and meeting other local kids.

I remember "Go outside and play. Come back when the street lights are on." That's probably felony child abuse these days, mom.

We won't even go into bonfires, illegal fireworks, BB guns, pea shooters... The statute of limitations has expired.

We have a great park here in Coeur D Alene that includes a sort-of merry-go-round that is elevated almost 6 feet up. My boy loves it. The amazing thing to me is how weak most of the children are these days- they can't pull themselves up on it, nor can many of their fathers lift them that high! It's really sad to see young boys who can't even hold their own weight or climb up a rope ladder.

I see all these youtube videos of teenage boys practically killing themselves on bikes and skateboards, with no reaal perception of gravity - maybe they didn't fall off the monkey bars enough as kids.

Eric, you really hit on something. Youngsters, and young boys in particular, really seek out risk-taking activity. When they don't get it as children, they seek it as teenagers, and then you get into all kinds of problems, of which extreme skateboarding is only the least.

When I was in my 10-13 years, a group of us kids in the apartment complexes came up with a fun game: staged fights, complete with pratfalls, a la the old Westerns. We learned how to roll down a flight of stairs and land on a concrete landing, and not hurt ourselves (well, not usually). Once, one of my friends and I decided to have a fake fight at the top of our apartment complex's very steep entrance, out by the main road. We ended it me rolling down an almost vertical 30-foot hill, arms and legs flailing and onto the driveway. A true over-the-top performance. A lady who lived across the street thought it was a real fight and she called the police. When the policeman came, we showed them what we were doing and I rolled down the hill for him again. He got a good laugh out of it. He cautioned us not to do that too close to the street, and went on his way.

It applies to adults as well, when you remove risk, people push themselves farther, until the consequences are far more than they can handle.

It is why the S&Ls started going belly up, they were allowed to make risky investments without facing the consequences for smaller amounts. Also 2 years ago allowing FDIC insurance on money markets will have the same effect on those: they banks have less risk now, and can take greater chances.

Lowering risk causes more dangerous behavior and worse consequences.

The new game here for the teenage boys involves shooting hardened plastic pellets, about the size of a .22 slug, at each other in war games. These things leave welts where they hit, and the boy down the street had his front tooth busted out down to the gum. The parents who let them play with these things won't allow their soon-to-be-driving sons ride their bikes on the city streets though.

http://www.amazon.com/CYMA-Cm023-Electric-Airsoft-Sub-Machine/dp/B000GFIYSY/ref=sr_1_22?ie=UTF8&s=sporting-goods&qid=1274282016&sr=1-22

I can't stand it. We apparently have an "epidemic" of fat, lazy kids that we absolutely must do something about.

Except we can't let them play in playgrounds or around anything that might hurt them, because we have to keep them absolutely safe, too.

It just makes me so...oooohh...Some days I just hate everything.

Just saw a video on "cowboy pinball". I think this is what comes of letting boys grow up with no normal kid outlets!

She's got a nifty site. She's advocating a "Take your kids to the park, and leave them there" day this weekend. I think it's a brilliant idea and plan on participating. It's crazy how sheltered kids are these days. A little scary to imagine what the world will look like when they're the adults...

I had no idea what "cowboy pinball" was. Damn that's funny!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgCiU7Rq_J0

I think it goes under the "Hey guys, watch this!" line of Darwinism-at-work.

When I go back to my home town, most of the playground equipment I enjoyed the most is gone: The tall slide, the merry-go-round, etc.

Growing up, we'd spend Thanksgiving and Easter on our family land near Bryan, TX. Other than playing in the old barns and dry creeks, the most fun we had was turning a giant cattle feeder on its side, grabbing on, and rolling it through pastures. Another fun thing we'd do is ride a boogie board down my grandparents stairs, and land in a beanbag chair (or whatever they're called.)

My husband's secretary's daughters go to Redeemer. Small world.

We used to drag those big refrigerator boxes to our local park, which had a variety of hills. We would get in the box and roll down the hill.

We had the extra risk of those big staples, but we didn't let that stop us.

A boy I knew broke his arm riding down one of the hills on his bike. His older sister fell off her bike on one of the gravel roads and landed face down. They had to tweeze some gravel out of her cheeks, but no permanent harm done.

It's like everything else. If you don't do anything, you have no stories to tell. "I sat and played World of Warcraft for two days straight! Sprained my thumb. It was awesome!"

Bleah.

Hell, even those morons playing "Cowboy Pinball" get something to talk about out of it. The ones whose brains aren't too rattled, anyway.

Eric, those guns are called air soft guns and the pellets are like beebees. I had to laugh at what you said because of how true it is. My son who is allowed to walk around town and go to parks is not allowed to have one of those guns but his friends who have the guns are not allowed to walk anywhere or hang out at the parks.

Those adventure playgrounds would've been a dream for me as a kid. More stuff to play with and imagine into whatever I could. We didn't have any parks or anything nearby, so we had the street and the back yard. When they were building houses in our neighborhood, we used to love to go and play on the construction site (when we could get away with it), and it was a superhero headquarters or some post-apocalyptic warzone. Even today, sometimes when we're in a really wacky building or stadium, I can't help but think how much fun I would've had playing in it when I was a kid...

You know what would be awesome? A grown-up playground. With slides and swings and monkey bars and everything scaled to adults. (Okay, it sounds naughty when I write it down, but you know what I mean...)

In the Fifties, we used to take old fifty gallon barrels, line them up, then jump up on them, and try to run races across the field. We fell off a lot. It was fun.

When Fourth of July came, we'd toss a cherry bomb under one of the barrels just to see it go flying up. It was fun.

We were told not to toss lighted fireworks at each other, so we didn't, though it would have been fun.

the other thing about running and playing and not being allowed to, has a big componant in "Weakness". Not only do you test limits in running and playing, you build muscle and balance and reflexes. When you never do those kinds of activities you don't... so essentially, you can't. It's amazing to me in my daughters 4th grade, how many clutzy kids there are. Like they don't know how to use their bodies. The issues feed on each other.

The jungle gym in our back yard served a variety of purposes, fort, tank turret, cockpit of an airplane. One time, my dad cut down one of the trees at the end of the yard, then cut all the branches off so they could be discarded later. The branches, draped over the jungle gym, made a first-rate hut! One of the neighborhood boys told me that the hut served as a perfect hiding place when he and his buddy were fleeing a neighborhood bully.

Those were different times, I guess. Cornerdemon, I second your motion. How fun that would be!

You can't leave kids alone at the park below a certain age - CPS will pay you a visit. Besides towns are literally infested with predators.

Why do I have a vision of that Christopher Walker Russian Roulette scene in my head when old rpm daddy talks about his kid's jungle gym?

oops- Walken. Can't type worth a damn lately.

Besides towns are literally infested with predators.

Posted by: Crusader at May 19, 2010 1:38 PM
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And where does this stat come from?

About the cowboy pinball, Amy says, "Pricklypear, I think that may be the biggest exhibition of idiocy I've ever seen."

You've obviously never been to Pamplona for San Fermin. It's hilarious! It's like a ten day long episode of 'Jack-ass'. I'd recommend it to anyone. (I'm not recommending participation here, being a spectator is fun enough).

My own children spent a lot of their formative years living in Europe (specifically Belgium). They have fantastic playgrounds there that challenge the kids to not break a bone. And guess what, they don't. Their mother and I always used to laugh and say, "Jeez, you could never get away with a great playground like this in the States."

Although we never had to deal with any broken bones, what would be the big deal if we did? I suppose it might inconvenience "busy" American parents.

If you're sheltering your children, STOP IT! It's making a whole generation of laughably weak, fat-assed, sissy Americans. Stop it now!