A spinoff from tmac2k8's thread. Some people started talking about liablity and it got me thinking about the playground equipment we had back in the day. Yes, we're going there. In the first grade, circa 1990, my favorite playground equipment consisted of a large 8 ft wooden pole hammered into the ground, similar to a telephone pole, with railroad spikes driven into it and an iron chain attached to the top. We used to climb this thing and jump off the top saying **** like "Geronimo" before we hit the playground surface which was just a bunch of woodchips that had been spread about. My other favorite was the "treadmill". Basically it was three tires side-by-side on an axle with the bottom of the tires just a few inches above the ground. Two of us would get on to the tires, grab onto the side handles and run as fast as we could until the other person lost control or gave up, falling of the treadmill in glorious fashion. One day, one of the kids in my class broke his nose on the treadmill. The teacher needed to get him to the nurse but didn't want to leave all the other kids outside. So she asked me to help him. It was the most disgusting thing I had seen up to that point in my life. The blood wasn't really flowing out the kid's nose because it had been mixed with snot. It was like a red, yellowish-green gel. The kid had a faceful and a handful of it running down his shirt, and his eyes were so watered up he couldn't see where he was going. Good times.
My elementary school had a jungle gym that I fell from the top of and hit my head on every bar on the way down.
We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
the schools in my neighbourhood are being forced to dismantle the older playgrounds because they no longer meet standards. (they're fine otherwise). Unfortunately, there's no funding provided for replacements playgrounds. So the kids are left with none
At the daycare where Mrs. SwoLy used to work, the director was told by the "Association of Daycare Checking Aholes" that swings were no longer a ride that the kids wouldn't benefit from it because they require someone's help or kids don't know how to swing themselves... I don't recall exactly what they said, but my first reaction was: "BULL SHhhhtufff... someone doesn't want to be sued." The swings were taken out and replaced with "more intuitive" playground equipment. I thought: "it's still bull." AND THEN...??? What happened????? Darn it, I am intrigued now! No, seriously. I am.
This thread reminded me of the old McDonalds playgrounds when I was growing up in the early 80s. We didn't need no ****in' ballpit, son. We had twisty slides! And... uh... these things: Spoiler My favorite thing at the McDonalds playground, though, was the spinning hamburger. I used to annihilate some Chicken McNuggets and then beast on this bad boy, spinning the weird merry-go-round up to top speed and then lying down on the bench inside and closing my eyes. My inner ear used to go haywire and I felt like I was tripping through outer space. That was the closest thing I could get to LSD when I was six years old! Typically, I'd keep spinning until I puked, and my mom would get so pissed. That's the price we paid for pee-wee mind expansion. I couldn't find a single picture of this awesome ride online, but here's a link to a weird drawing some guy did of it on his Angelfire(!) page: http://www.angelfire.com/la3/goldenroad15/mcdonalds.html
Check this Swoly, did you know that daycare employees are not required to drug test? So the swings gotta go but the heroin/crack head in the 2 year old class can stay.
Taken from another site but took the words right out of my mouth! "Remember when you’d wait in line to play on these in the summer (while wearing shorts) and you’d risk third-degree burns just to land in an unsafe pile of who-knows-what? The slide at my playground had nothing but cement, cigarette butts, and maybe even broken glass awaiting me at the end of my journey." Like this:
Ha! My girlfriend grew up in Harlem. She says that in elementary school, they used to pick up crack vials on the playground and collect them like they were pogs or something. Rare colors were especially prized. "Oooh, she got a BLUE top!!"
Yeap. I know that. They also underwent a background check, though, and are scrutinized. Good point, dear sir.
I fell climbing on one of those big round jungle gyms and had to get 14 stitches in my lip when it took the brunt of the fall. Also, for some unexplained reason, when I was about 5 or 6 years old my day care center had loose PVC pipes out in the open and we started playing with them like we were sword-fighting. I got nailed in the forehead, and it busted open...had to get stitches there too. These days that would have lawsuit written all over it.
The park by me has all sorts of modern playground equipment. But when I was younger, it was this really old, barely stable wooden playground(splinters galore) and the ground was covered with pebbles. I went down the tunnel slide headfirst when I was bout two(the four year old ahead of me did it, so why couldn't I?) and landed face first in the rocks. Had to get stitches, I was a real bloody mess. Thinking about it now, who thought that was a good idea? A rickety unsanded playground with rocks everywhere. And this was the '90s!
