Okay, wow, check out this picture!

[conuly]

Several thoughts went through my head as I saw this:

1. OMG HOW COOL IS THIS!
2. Bit dangerous.
3. But I bet nobody ever got hurt. You'd think they would, but they don't. Very annoying habit of children, not getting hurt.
4. I should totally share this with people!
5. But not Ana. Ye gods, not Ana.

Comments

[sayga.livejournal.com]

And in contrast, look where we are today:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/04/19/2011-04-19_classic_kids_games_like_kickball_deemed_unsafe_by_state_in_effort_to_increase_su.html

(If you posted that or something similar, sorry. I haven't been online much, but my weekly newsletter "This Is True" (http://www.thisistrue.com) mentioned this article and it's just insane).

[conuly]

I have seen that, though I don't know if I posted it.

The real issue is that the state is trying to close a loophole in the law that allows for summer camps that aren't being run and monitored as summer camps... and aren't paying the taxes and fees that camps pay.

It's a tax thing, not really a games thing. That's just what they're hiding it as.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Great photo! THe kids can't have spotted the photographer.

I wonder if the definition of "got hurt" has changed? You graze your knees, doing that sort of thing, but that's only a problem if parents find blood on socks. Plenty of my classmates fell off climbing frames (and buildings) and reappeared the next week with a really cool plaster on their arm that we all wrote rude things on - but that's only a broken arm, it doesn't count as "hurt" enough to stop you doing it again.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Very cool, and more than a bit dangerous, since that platform looks to be about 20 feet high. That's high enough to make kids cautious, so maybe nobody ever did fall off it.

However, we don't know that. If a kid did fall off that ledge, odds are against his escaping with no worse than a skinned knee. The measure of the risk isn't in how statistically probable the accident is, because that can't be measured. We do know that most adults who were climbers as children took at least one bad fall, so we can assume that most climbing children are going to fall, but we can't predict when. The question is, how bad is the accident likely to be if it happens? Broken skull, broken neck, broken back, broken pelvis? Twenty feet isn't an insignificant fall, especially onto pavement.