conuly

Love the long rickety slide, and the snail too - ever so cute!

Alas, yes, playgrounds have grown increasingly boring. They look cool, all colored and fancy, but the towering plain-pipe jungle gyms of my childhood were far more interesting to climb. Oh yeah, and the long rickety slides, slippery when wet, blistering hot in summer sun: they had things to teach a child. So did the long, long swings with the flat wooden seats you could stand on, and the wonderful carousels that would spin you right off if you didn't hold on, and the teeter-totters that would ride three at a time on each side, left you six feet in the air....

I'm all in favor of impact-absorbing surface materials, though. Bark is splintery, pea gravel is dusty, wood chips track everywhere and that recycled-plastic stuff is just kinda nasty, but any of them are better than kids splitting their heads open.

There is also a lot to be said for teaching children how to do things safely: "Go feet first only down the slide", "wait till the other person is ready before getting off the see-saw", "keep your feet out from under the carousel", etc. - rather than making a zillion pettifogging rules that all add up to NO PLAYING.

Still nothing better to climb than real trees, real rocks, and real rickety old abandoned structures, though. :P