Welcome to the Jungle, Jim
When did the park become a plastic wonderland atop a bog like foot or so of shredded rubber. The parks look as premade as your modern suburb. A child will feel at home in any park as they all have the same basic bits and pieces.
Gone are the jungle gyms the monkey bars the teeter totter. Gone the strange animals with saddles affixed a spring that would be better suited to a car suspension. (I remember you could pull one of those things back, let it go and the beast would shoot back and forth for minor eternity.) Gone the aluminum slide that was about 600 degrees in the sun. Done the sandbox filled with sand grass dirt toys bottle caps cigarette butts and the occasional hypodermic needle.
Those god awful four fountain sprinklers on concrete remain with the garbage in the middle no one is willing to fetch and the permanent green slime coating the entire area the water covers. Every one comes with a mother / grandmother seated half a block away shouting at children, "You stay away from their, Jimmy busted his head open on one of these!"
And Holy Gather of the Weary Women Society. These are people so starved for social contact that they practically beg their kids to play with whatever kids come into the park with an adult, just for the opportunity to make a little small talk with said parent. While my niece had three adults at her beck and call, these women often manage two or three children apiece. They appear to be somewhat sleep deprived and practically cheer when the children decide its time to spend twenty minutes on the swing. That only requires the slight exertion of the occasional push whereas the rest of the plastic wonderland requires the poor adult to chase a child from play station to play station, up stairs through tubes and under the occasional slide. Often I see wiped out parents sitting on the foot high ledge that surrounds the rubbery space, keeping a hawkish eye on their children wondering just how far they can let em get before they need to leap into action again.
The view, of course, is a beautiful thing from the male perspective. Sure these may be busy mothers, but they all still keep up on what the fashionable mom on the go ought to be wearing. If I wasn't so busy chasing a little one about myself I'd be in a state of shock from all the cleavage available top be viewed not to mention the glorious abundance of tight shorts / pants.
I don't remember these women being around when I used to spend my time at the park during day camp. Perhaps I just didn't notice because it was prehormone days, but I seem to remember that almost everyone's parents worked in the old neighborhood. A few would volunteer to by chaperones for the weekly outings, but for the most part they stayed far away from the parks during the day.
All in all the safer parks just don't seem that fun to me. You have to wonder what age the kids start getting bored with turning the wheel on the choo choo train? (why does the train even have a wheel I wonder?) When does the choice of 10 different four foot high slides loose its appeal?
More laters
Gone are the jungle gyms the monkey bars the teeter totter. Gone the strange animals with saddles affixed a spring that would be better suited to a car suspension. (I remember you could pull one of those things back, let it go and the beast would shoot back and forth for minor eternity.) Gone the aluminum slide that was about 600 degrees in the sun. Done the sandbox filled with sand grass dirt toys bottle caps cigarette butts and the occasional hypodermic needle.
Those god awful four fountain sprinklers on concrete remain with the garbage in the middle no one is willing to fetch and the permanent green slime coating the entire area the water covers. Every one comes with a mother / grandmother seated half a block away shouting at children, "You stay away from their, Jimmy busted his head open on one of these!"
And Holy Gather of the Weary Women Society. These are people so starved for social contact that they practically beg their kids to play with whatever kids come into the park with an adult, just for the opportunity to make a little small talk with said parent. While my niece had three adults at her beck and call, these women often manage two or three children apiece. They appear to be somewhat sleep deprived and practically cheer when the children decide its time to spend twenty minutes on the swing. That only requires the slight exertion of the occasional push whereas the rest of the plastic wonderland requires the poor adult to chase a child from play station to play station, up stairs through tubes and under the occasional slide. Often I see wiped out parents sitting on the foot high ledge that surrounds the rubbery space, keeping a hawkish eye on their children wondering just how far they can let em get before they need to leap into action again.
The view, of course, is a beautiful thing from the male perspective. Sure these may be busy mothers, but they all still keep up on what the fashionable mom on the go ought to be wearing. If I wasn't so busy chasing a little one about myself I'd be in a state of shock from all the cleavage available top be viewed not to mention the glorious abundance of tight shorts / pants.
I don't remember these women being around when I used to spend my time at the park during day camp. Perhaps I just didn't notice because it was prehormone days, but I seem to remember that almost everyone's parents worked in the old neighborhood. A few would volunteer to by chaperones for the weekly outings, but for the most part they stayed far away from the parks during the day.
All in all the safer parks just don't seem that fun to me. You have to wonder what age the kids start getting bored with turning the wheel on the choo choo train? (why does the train even have a wheel I wonder?) When does the choice of 10 different four foot high slides loose its appeal?
More laters
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 12:52 AM
1 Comments:
I think this will only make things worse. The kids just under our age range don't know what a spanking is--they got time outs. This next group of kids isn't subjected to spanking either--and now the playground is padded. What kind of adults will they make? We've seen what the time out kids have grown into and it isn't pretty.
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