Pitting the candyasses and suitmongers who are destroying traditional playgrounds

[danceswithcats]

This is unbridled insanity (http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-cplaygroundjul18,0,4929507.story?page=1&coll=sfla-news-broward). It's supposed to be a playground, but it has a list of things you can't do which is longer than what you are allowed to do.

Reflecting on my elementary school playground time, a portion of it was spent playing a game we invented called "Rumbleball." The rules were simple. If you had the ball, everyone else tried to kill you. We all survived, with no sixth graders interred on the field. Kids also learned about physics, science, and math. If walked too close to the swings often enough, you'd get kicked in the head. It hurt like hell and you bled. No one required a refresher on that. ;)

I fear for the capabilities of future generations, the way this is headed.

[stegon66]

Since 1999, Broward County schools paid out about $561,000 to settle 189 claims for playground accidents, about 5 percent of the amount the district spent on all injury claims in that time. To keep those numbers low, Graziose said, he needs to keep thinking of ways to make playgrounds safe.

So who's really to blame here? The school or the lawsuit-happy asshole parents who try to get rich when their kid scrapes an elbow?

Come to think of it, I do kind of wish I had a nickel for everytime I banged myself up as a kid... :D

[Silver Fire]

So who's really to blame here? The school or the lawsuit-happy asshole parents who try to get rich when their kid scrapes an elbow?
The lawsuit-happy asshole parents.

You're really pitting the wrong people here, danceswithcats.

[Scissorjack]

Reflecting on my elementary school playground time, a portion of it was spent playing a game we invented called "Rumbleball." The rules were simple. If you had the ball, everyone else tried to kill you.

We had Bullrush. It was only banned by the school {not that that stopped illicit games} because too many rugby players were getting hurt to field a full team on Saturdays. :D Them were the days.

{For those unfamiliar with the rules of Bullrush, you start with one player in the middle of a field, and a couple of dozen at the end. The player in the middle calls out one of the mob, who has to try and make it to the other side: if he does, it's "Bullrush!", and the mob stampedes to the other side, with the hapless caller in the centre trying to stop anyone he can. If the original callee doesn't make it, he joins the caller in the middle, and the next person is called to run across. So it goes, until you have a dozen people in the middle of a field trying to stop an equal dozen chargers by fair means or foul - the finale is when a lone survivor has to try and make it past twenty three others intent on mayhem. Injuries were frequent. No-one ever died. It's probably illegal now.}

[betenoir]

The lawsuit-happy asshole parents.

You're really pitting the wrong people here, danceswithcats.

Well yeah...but...if a handful of asshole parents want to cash in and the reaction of the whole system (the courts, the schools) is to cave in and put the asshole parents ahead of the kids and basic sanity, then I say pit the courts and the schools as well.

[mhendo]

The lawsuit-happy asshole parents.

You're really pitting the wrong people here, danceswithcats.
:confused:

As far as i could tell, the "candyasses and suitmongers" in the thread title was intended to include the "lawsuit-happy asshole parents."

[wring]

So who's really to blame here? The school or the lawsuit-happy asshole parents who try to get rich when their kid scrapes an elbow?

any info on the actual injuries- I mean other than the assumption that the injuries were minor?

[Nutty Bunny]

Reflecting on my elementary school playground time, a portion of it was spent playing a game we invented called "Rumbleball." The rules were simple. If you had the ball, everyone else tried to kill you.

Oh, you mean "Smear the Queer"? That's what the kids on my block called it in the 80s. Now I don't mind the game, I just don't want my child calling it that.

Back in my day ::cringe::, we had the playground that was there since the 1950s. Everything was made of steel and the chains on the swing would pinch your hands. The slide would get hot and the merry-go-round could be a hazard, depending on what kids were on it. But we liked it! Now, I noticed that they've recently replaced the good, sturdy steel playground equipment with plastic.

I don't think they have a "no running" policy yet and I certainly hope they don't institute that anytime soon.

Pretty soon, our kids will have to go to school in hazmat suits and take a Silkwood shower after gym class![/hyperbole]

[Amazon Floozy Goddess]

Unbelieveable. I got my share of bangs and cuts on the playground as a kid and I'm none the worse for wear. Kids are way more elastic and fast healing than these people seem to think.

The excuse about vagrants in the cement tubes is my favorite.

Cement Tube Vagrants - Band name!

[Trunk]

[Reflecting on my elementary school playground time, a portion of it was spent playing a game we invented called "Rumbleball." The rules were simple. If you had the ball, everyone else tried to kill you.
We had that too. We weren't as creative as you. We simply called it "Kill the Man With the Ball."

That was the name!!

And you WANTED the ball.

[Evil Captor]

Oh, you mean "Smear the Queer"? That's what the kids on my block called it in the 80s. Now I don't mind the game, I just don't want my child calling it that.

We called it 'Smear the Queer' when I was a kid, too. All the kids stood around in a group, then one threw it in the air, and the others tried to catch it. Whoever caught it, everyone else tried to tackle. Great fun.

[Neurotik]

When I was a kid (this was only the 80s) one of the parks nearby had a roller slide. Basically, a ten foot slant made up of rollers. It was awesome, especially trying to run up it. Of course, this being a slide made up of lots of rollers, fingers were frequently caught and sometimes broken in them. When it happened, the parents nearby would sit you down, stick your finger in some ice or cold water (if you weren't smart enought to do it yourself - which most kids over the age of five were) and wait for you to get bored and go back out there.

I wonder if its still there...probably not.

[Zeriel]

Oh, you mean "Smear the Queer"? That's what the kids on my block called it in the 80s. Now I don't mind the game, I just don't want my child calling it that.

Heh, my dad insisted that it be called "Tackle the Turkey" instead, because he didn't want me calling it that. Unfortunately, that just led to a variant game called "Smear the Queer who Tried to Change the Name of Smear the Queer", no ball required and with me as the effigy for my dad.

[Revtim]

We called it "Smear The Queer" too when I was playing this in the 70's. It was years after I had played my last game before I knew the homosexual connotation of the word "queer". Not that it would have made a difference of course, back then if somebody had suggested we call the game "Murder The Faggot" that would have been no problem.

[CalMeacham]

When I went to Parochial School they forbade running at recess, I suspect for precisely these reasons. I hated it. The Public School kids got to run at their recess. And we had no playground equipment.

On the other hand, we did have public playgrounds. I'm surprised and annoyed at this decision. I can understand the barring of teeter-totters/seesaws, because there is a potential for injury there. But modern versions using large and heavy springs minimize the chance for anyone getting caught underneath, or suddenly being dropped to the ground with a jolt. Forbid swings! Insane! Our local playground just installed these things, and I'm one of the parents that propelled the change. The existing equipment was old and falling apart -- that's dangerous.

[Clothahump]

It's all Bush's fault.


Hey, I just thought I beat the libs to the punch.

[Zebra]

Since 1999, Broward County schools paid out about $561,000 to settle 189 claims for playground accidents, about 5 percent of the amount the district spent on all injury claims in that time. To keep those numbers low, Graziose said, he needs to keep thinking of ways to make playgrounds safe.


Wait a second, if $561,000 is 5%, that means that since 1999 Broward County shcools $11,220,000 for all of their injury claims. WTH?!?!? Are they running a Gladiator school?

[bouv]

The wussification of America continues.

Why don't the fucking judges ion those child injury cases throw out the damn case? Oh, a five year odl fell and hurt his arm? So? That's what five year-olds do! I'm sure out of all the child injury cases, at best, only 10% deserved to go to trial. That's not even saying 10% deserved money, just that they maybe didn't need to be thrown out right away the instant a judge saw them. Remember, I said maybe they didn't need to be tossed out immediatley.

[Barbarian]

Uber-safe playgrounds are dangerous. Put all that rubber matting down, with boring equipment, and kids now end up doing crazier shit than I ever did because they don't get hurt.

There's supposed to be a continuum of pain, and as a kid you learn not to get too high on that scale-- but remove the continuum, and kids go straight from 'safe' to 'dead' without any learning steps.

[coop]

We had Bullrush. It was only banned by the school {not that that stopped illicit games} because too many rugby players were getting hurt to field a full team on Saturdays. :D Them were the days.

{For those unfamiliar with the rules of Bullrush, you start with one player in the middle of a field, and a couple of dozen at the end. The player in the middle calls out one of the mob, who has to try and make it to the other side: if he does, it's "Bullrush!", and the mob stampedes to the other side, with the hapless caller in the centre trying to stop anyone he can. If the original callee doesn't make it, he joins the caller in the middle, and the next person is called to run across. So it goes, until you have a dozen people in the middle of a field trying to stop an equal dozen chargers by fair means or foul - the finale is when a lone survivor has to try and make it past twenty three others intent on mayhem. Injuries were frequent. No-one ever died. It's probably illegal now.}

We played a similar game at my school but it was called "British Bulldog".
When you were in the middle you didn't call out anyone's name, everyone just ran straight across and you tried to catch at least one person.
Fun game until I was running behind someone who got caught by his right arm. I went to dodge past him and he managed to pull his arm out of the catcher's grip. Said arm came straight at my face and managed to land right on my teeth. Luckily :smack: it only broke 3 teeth in half and chipped another 2. I don't think I ever played the game again... and my parents NEVER thought of suing the school.
It was an RAAF school in Malaysia and we had an RAAF dentist located next to the school grounds. 3 caps and 2 partial caps later, all was well. Of course when I got home that day, my mother had a fit :( but unfortunately, didn't ban me from going to school ever again :mad:

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

We had that too. We weren't as creative as you. We simply called it "Kill the Man With the Ball."

That was the name!!

And you WANTED the ball. Oh, yeh!

Good times, good times.

Telling kids not to run? That's just so wrong. However will they get in shape for their properly supervised soccer games?

[CalMeacham]

We played a similar game at my school but it was called "British Bulldog".



We had this name, too. Where did you live? I was in central Jersey. Despite the ban on running, they played this at our Catholic school (until the nuns came out, saw it, and broke it up.)

[BiblioCat]

Reflecting on my elementary school playground time, a portion of it was spent playing a game we invented called "Rumbleball." The rules were simple. If you had the ball, everyone else tried to kill you.We called it simply "Rumble." One girl did break her arm playing Rumble at my school (mid-70s - no lawsuit was ever filed), and the teachers were told to not let us play it any more, but it didn't matter. They wanted their time to smoke and chat, we wanted to play Rumble. The teachers just pretended not to see us.

Kids also learned about physics, science, and math. If walked too close to the swings often enough, you'd get kicked in the head. It hurt like hell and you bled. No one required a refresher on that. ;) As my dad always told my mother, when I was doing something stupid or dangerous, "She'll only do it once." ;)

[Shirley Ujest]

What about the joys of hanging on to the merry go round and trying to knock kids over that were standing too close?



And the burning sensation of sliding down a scalding hot metal slide in your skirt or shorts.

Good times.

[Hung Mung]

Jeez...I remember when the jungle gym was steel posts set on concrete. The likelihood of falling down on a concrete slab was an excellent incentive to not fall. And if you did fall, you tried to land on your feet. Maybe the next bright idea would be to put mats down below anything higher than three feet. All jungle gyms must have air conditioning. Slides must be kept in the shade so as not to burn anyone's bottom.

Sigh...what's the point of going outside if you can't run around like monkeys?

[tdn]

It's all Bush's fault.

Hey, I just thought I beat the libs to the punch.
Was this post really necessary? Buttmunch.

[Amazon Floozy Goddess]

The irony of this is so thick you could choke on it.

"Childhood obesity rates rising! Get off the couch, kids, and get some excercise!...but don't run on the playground, you could get hurt."

I'm waiting for about 15 years from now when they discover that some previously unknown toxin in all the uber-safe plastic equipment gave cancer to every kid who touched it.

[coop]

We had this name, too. Where did you live? I was in central Jersey. Despite the ban on running, they played this at our Catholic school (until the nuns came out, saw it, and broke it up.)
It was when I went to RAAF School Penang (http://www.raafschoolpenang.com), Malaysia in 1978 - 1979.

[Mycroft Holmes]

"Smear the Queer" is what we called it too. We always thought "queer" just meant somebody strange. We had no idea how un-PC we were.

It was great fun. For some strange reason, even though you knew you were going to get clobbered, you wanted that ball. I was pretty big and strong for my age (a good four inches taller and 40 pounds heavier than most of my classmates), so I could sometimes be seen carrying the ball and three or four of my classmates draped all over me back and forth across the field during our school lunch breaks. :p

[caveman]

My wife and I, both born in the 70s and schooled in the 80s and 90s, refer to those under 20 or so as "The Plastic Slide Generation" who we imagine are soft and feeble due to never having their thighs scorched on a long steel slide that had been baking in the Texas sun all day.

[SmackFu]

When I was growing up, we had a tire playground at the local school. Now that thing was unsafe. Dirty tires filled with toxic standing water. Yum.

[Hampshire]

Ahh, Smear the Queer!
It's what seperated the boys from the men at St.Mary's Catholic School back in 4th grade.
Basically a solo keep-away game. If you had the ball you kept it away from everyone as long as you could. Eveyone else had to tackle you and strip the ball from you so they could have it. Kind of like a non-stop fumble recovery that ran for a 40 minute duration at recess.
Injured? Sit out for a couple minutes. But don't sit out for too long or it's "Wuss! Be a man! Get back out there!"

[Guinastasia]

We never played this because at my parochial school, we didn't start going outside for recess until fifth grade. Even then, there wasn't any playground equipment, and the 7th and 8th grade boys always hogged the basketball court. Oh, and if you were caught roughhousing, you'd get detention. :rolleyes:

Still, I played on some of those old-fashioned playgrounds out at North Park here with my cousins. The old metal slides, the huge swings, the big see-saws. Damn, that was fun. The only sucky thing was that the slides got too hot, or when they weren't "slippy" enough, and you kind of didn't slide so much as jerk down. Not much fun.

Oh well, one thing to keep in mind-these are kids. They'll FIND a way to do things that are rowdy and outrageous and possibly dangerous even on the so-called "safety" playgrounds. That gives me hope.

[Zebra]

In the future all kids will be put into a hamster ball type thing that not only will keep them safe from falls and germs but special sensors will change anything negative being said to them into positive re-enforcement. Did I say enforcement? I meant re-encouragement.

[msmith537]

We called it simply "Rumble." One girl did break her arm playing Rumble at my school (mid-70s - no lawsuit was ever filed), and the teachers were told to not let us play it any more, but it didn't matter. They wanted their time to smoke and chat, we wanted to play Rumble. The teachers just pretended not to see us.


We used to call it "Kill the Carrier". You basically held the ball as long as you could while everyone else tried to take it away at any cost.

I also liked Dodgeball. I don't see what all the fuss was. It didn't hurt that much to get hit and you got to give back.

Of course, the best thing we had was this Thunderdome-style geodesic dome jungle gym in elementary school. It seemed about 10'-12' tall from the perspective of a 5'10" adults memory but 8' is probably more accurate. Status was achieved in the dome and alowed you to hang out at a much higher level.

[Wolfian]

It's all Bush's fault.


Hey, I just thought I beat the libs to the punch.
: Tosses Clothahump a ball. :

SMEAR THE ASSHAT!

[Cat Whisperer]

The irony of this is so thick you could choke on it.

"Childhood obesity rates rising! Get off the couch, kids, and get some excercise!...but don't run on the playground, you could get hurt."
This is kinda blowing my mind. I recently watched my five year-old nephew - he ran around the yard trying to find something to play with, then he stood in place for a bit and pretty much just vibrated. Kids don't *want* to run and play - they *need* to.


I'm waiting for about 15 years from now when they discover that some previously unknown toxin in all the uber-safe plastic equipment gave cancer to every kid who touched it.
You know, I think a lot of plastic stuff *does* out-gas toxic fumes. Seriously.

I know four young boys and two young girls, and three of these kids have already broken a bone. It was not a huge deal, they healed in no time flat, and everyone moved on. There were no lawsuits or recriminations. I remember back to my childhood; there were any number of broken arms or legs at school occasionally. Again, no big deal. Our games and playgrounds were fairly rough-and-tumble, and you monitored yourself accordingly.

Like others have said, you make playgrounds too safe, and kids have to go out of their way to find ways to hurt themselves - now they have to ride their bikes across the safe plastic stuff, instead of just swinging too high and jumping off.

[Hung Mung]

Oh well, one thing to keep in mind-these are kids. They'll FIND a way to do things that are rowdy and outrageous and possibly dangerous even on the so-called "safety" playgrounds. That gives me hope.
Ain't THAT the truth? We always found ways of turning innocuous playground equipment into tests of strength and sturdiness, if not outright violence. *sniff*Aw, those where the days.

[stpauler]

We played "smear the queer" in our neighborhood and never gave the name a second thought. We also decided who was going to be "it" for other games by counting out "not last night, but the night before, 24 niggers came knockin' at my door". We didn't think much about it because we were kids and these words didn't carry any weight to us, they were just how we played the game.

Back to the OP, Bill Cosby did a great routine called The Playground on his 1966 album "Wonderfulness". He talks about how the kids used to play in an abandoned lot with broken glass and no one ever really got hurt.... but once the parents, who were out to kill the kids, installed the monkey bars, they lost 102 kids that day.

[Guinastasia]

In the future all kids will be put into a hamster ball type thing that not only will keep them safe from falls and germs but special sensors will change anything negative being said to them into positive re-enforcement. Did I say enforcement? I meant re-encouragement.

Actually, hamster balls sound like fun. Can we say "bumper balls?"

[Southpaw]

Kids also learned about physics, science, and math. If walked too close to the swings often enough, you'd get kicked in the head. It hurt like hell and you bled. No one required a refresher on that.
We had a game where you tried to run from one end of the swingset to the other and not get kicked in the head by the swingers.

The playground at my grade school was all metal, set in asphalt. I don't think a school year went by without at least one kid breaking a limb. And parents didn't think of suing the school. After all, if their kid was stupid enough to jump off the top of the monkey bars, he got what he deserved.

[tdn]

This is kinda blowing my mind. I recently watched my five year-old nephew - he ran around the yard trying to find something to play with, then he stood in place for a bit and pretty much just vibrated. Kids don't *want* to run and play - they *need* to.
Heh.

When my nieces were little, we used to play a game. It was called "Let's see who can sit still and be quiet the longest." Guess which one won?

That's right. Neither.

[Bryan Ekers]

British Bulldog: Montreal 1977-1981, more or less.

[Guinastasia]

Actually, to be fair, my father DID do the funeral for a young girl who was killed when a playground slide collapsed while she was playing on it. But I'm guessing that the problem was one of neglect, not playground equipment itself. (I suspect the slide was probably falling apart already)

I would complain if the old playground equipment was not kept in good condition-rusty nails sticking out, jagged rusty metal edges, broken down, falling apart, etc. But as long as that's not the case, the worst hazard would be the big mudpit below the slide. (Damn, that was GREAT on a rainy day-SPLASH!!!!)

[Knorf]

I basically agree with the op, but did you all read:

Since 1999, Broward County schools paid out about $561,000 to settle 189 claims for playground accidents, about 5 percent of the amount the district spent on all injury claims in that time.

It's not hard to understand why they're doing it.

[Troy McClure SF]

It's all Bush's fault.


Hey, I just thought I beat the libs to the punch.

Wow, 45 posts and no one's mentioned it at all, except you!

You really beat them to the punch, didn't you? Wow. You must be proud of yourself. Do you want a cookie? A little ice cream? A lolly?

Dumbshit.

[Velma]

I agree that the 'no running' rules and such are going too far, but am I the only one who thinks some of the new playground equipment out there is pretty cool? When I was in elementary, we had a few swings, a slide and teeter-totter. Now they have huge tree-house type structures with rope ladders, nets, forts, great big curly slides and climbing walls. Lots of kids have great big wooden forts and swingsets in their own yards, too. I think most kids have it pretty good when it comes to playground equipment.

Of course there are those that are going to take it too far.

[tdn]

Wow, 45 posts and no one's mentioned it at all, except you!
You miss the point. He's complaining about the dumbshit liberals who come into a thread that has nothing to do with politics and politicizing it. In a dumbass way.

[Troy McClure SF]

You miss the point.
Not so much. Yet another, "Hey Group X will certainly come in and complain about this and hijack with their own agenda, no I'll cleverly pre-emptively counteract them and hijack with my own anti-Group X agenda," which is followed dy deafening silence by Group X, leaving the original hijacker looking like an abosolute dumbass for 1) hijacking and B) being so perfectly wrong.

That about right? :D

[Cat Whisperer]

Why don't we all just ignore Clothahump's post, the way you would ignore a fart at a funeral? (Well, pretend to ignore it, while giggling a little. Or is that just me?)

[tdn]

Why don't we all just ignore Clothahump's post, the way you would ignore a fart at a funeral? (Well, pretend to ignore it, while giggling a little. Or is that just me?)
I dint smell nothin'.

[ElvisL1ves]

It's all Bush's fault.Don't you mean "It's all the trial lawyers' fault"?

You had a great chance to take a whack at a standard GOP boogeyman, to a receptive audience even, and you blew it so badly it backfired.

[mhendo]

We played a similar game at my school but it was called "British Bulldog".That's what we called it in Australia too.

No ball involved; just lots of pummelling.

[Craneop2]

There is an elementary school accross the street from my house. On the playground there are some plastic structures. I'm guessing they are playground equipment. This plastic structure is surrounded by a square area of what seems to be balsa wood chips. I have never even observed the supervising adults to even allow a ball to be introduced into the play area.

To tell ya the truth I probably learned as much on the playground when I was growing up as I did in the class room. I learned about safety, teamwork and a LOT about social interaction on the playground. You can't really teach that in a foam rubber play area.

To me it all started going downhill when they allowed the TOUGH... SMART lawyers began advertising on tV that they could make you independently wealthy with proceeds from law suits.


Just my $0.02

[Zebra]

We played a similar game at my school but it was called "British Bulldog".
When you were in the middle you didn't call out anyone's name, everyone just ran straight across and you tried to catch at least one person.



We played that but it was called Sharks and Minnows. Oh and we played it in the pool. So add possbile drowning, slipping on sides as you scramble out and the fact that you have nearly naked kids grabbing other nearly naked kids underwater.

Good times, good times.

[Yeticus Rex]

: Tosses Clothahump a ball. :

SMEAR THE ASSHAT!
ASSAULT THE ASSHAT!!!

[jsgoddess]

We played a lot of Red Rover, which is similar to some of the games mentioned.

And we had the thing called the witch's hat which resulted in a lot of smashed fingers and knees. Ah, great stuff.

Oh, and my cousin Dominic froze his lips to the monkey bars.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Human-sized hamster balls (http://www.zorb.com/)!

[iamthewalrus(:3=]

We played that but it was called Sharks and Minnows. Oh and we played it in the pool. So add possbile drowning, slipping on sides as you scramble out and the fact that you have nearly naked kids grabbing other nearly naked kids underwater.

Good times, good times.We played Sharks and Minnows, too, but since you had to pull someone up to the surface to "catch" them, chances of drowning are minimized. We never got out of the pool, though. Just swim from one end to the other. Worst case scenario was that you inhaled some water and the guy grabbing you hauled you up for air.

Actually, the worst case scenario was playing it in a coed environment and having to sacrifice your swimsuit to a Shark with an iron grip. Luckily, that never happened to me.

[What Exit?]

I must be the worst Dad in the world, I just finished building a seesaw for my kids and they love it. You see very few playgrounds with seesaws anymore.
I built it out of a 12’ plank of wood and scraps of 2x4. The Base is painted Red and the blank is Stained and Polyurethaned. It is only 2’ high, but I can easily raise it higher as they get older. I used 9” lengths of wood 1” Dowel for the handled. The design is inspired by an example of an 1800’s seesaw I saw at the Eerie Canal.

I am trying very hard to not blame the lawyers, but darn it why can’t we cut down on the stupid liability lawsuits. Parents should not have any hope of winning playground lawsuits unless they can prove some form of gross negligence. Kids get hurt; don’t punish all kids because of this.
I am sure this will somehow offend the “Think of the Kids” people and some trial lawyers. I will apologize if it offends you but I do believe in what I am saying.

[CalMeacham]

Eerie Canal.


The Eerie Canal?




That's scary.

[What Exit?]

The Eerie Canal?

That's scary.

I know it is not the standard spelling, I am sorry I was looking at http://www.eriecanalmuseum.org/shop/item.asp?id=1036
a few days ago.

[fessie]

Uber-safe playgrounds are dangerous. Put all that rubber matting down, with boring equipment, and kids now end up doing crazier shit than I ever did because they don't get hurt.

There's supposed to be a continuum of pain, and as a kid you learn not to get too high on that scale-- but remove the continuum, and kids go straight from 'safe' to 'dead' without any learning steps.


That's exactly right.

Our community has a nifty new safe-as-heck playground, with enclosed tube slides perched a healthy 8-10' above the ground. Impossible to fall out of them, perfectly safe. So what do the kids do? Climb the outsides of the tubes.

We only accidentally found a merry-go-round at a state park nearby - what a delight! Centrifugal force at its best! When I was a tot my uncle would load a bunch of us on the merry-go-round and give it a good push & kids would fly off at every angle.

Of course, when I was 4 years old I fell off a swing while learning the "lean back while going forward, bend your knees going back" maneuver (what's that called anyway?). In an attempt to hit maximum velocity on the forward part, I put my hands on the seat and leaned back all the way. One fractured skull and 8 days in the hospital later, I'd learned my lesson. Did my parents even think about calling a lawyer? No, that would be insane.

[elfbabe]

I grew up in the post-teeter-totter and merry-go-round era, sadly, but I did get to experience most of the other fun playground equipment, including unbelievably hot metal slides. (way more fun to run UP them when they're that hot, and try not to fall down and scald your stomach) And my mom was awesome enough to occasionally take me to a park that still had these really BIG teeter-totters AND play on them with me... including telling me to crawl up the beam of the teeter-totter to counteract the weight difference.

... man, now I really want to play on a teeter-totter.

[What Exit?]

I grew up in the post-teeter-totter and merry-go-round era, sadly, but I did get to experience most of the other fun playground equipment, including unbelievably hot metal slides. (way more fun to run UP them when they're that hot, and try not to fall down and scald your stomach) And my mom was awesome enough to occasionally take me to a park that still had these really BIG teeter-totters AND play on them with me... including telling me to crawl up the beam of the teeter-totter to counteract the weight difference.

... man, now I really want to play on a teeter-totter.

Asimple See-Saw is simple to build. You need a sturdy pivot point. A bike Rack would be great or a strong split rail fence with the upper cross piece removed.
Get a large plank and attach too sturdy pieces of wood with a small gap in the center to accomodate your pivet. Instant unsafe See-Saw without handles.

[bouv]

I grew up in the post-teeter-totter and merry-go-round era, sadly, but I did get to experience most of the other fun playground equipment, including unbelievably hot metal slides. (way more fun to run UP them when they're that hot, and try not to fall down and scald your stomach) And my mom was awesome enough to occasionally take me to a park that still had these really BIG teeter-totters AND play on them with me... including telling me to crawl up the beam of the teeter-totter to counteract the weight difference.

... man, now I really want to play on a teeter-totter.

:eek:

You poor child (though I could have sworn you were about my age...but maybe up in Canada it's all different. :p )

I was in elementary school in the late 80's and early 90's, and we had all the fun stuff. High monkey bars, rings, swings (all over dirt, not concrete, though), a zip line, jungle gyms, a wooden structure thingy with a ramp, a tire ramp (complete with holes to get your leg caught in as you ran up), a tube slide (did you know sliding in an enclosed PVC pipe gives you an AMAZING static charge to shock people with?), a regular METAL slide, and a ladder in the middle. That thing was swet.

But I must confess, the most dangerous of all the playground equipment (Hell, even in MY day I can't see how they allowed it) was the climbing bars. It was on the "big kids" playground (we had one playground with most of the fun stuff for the K-3rd graders, and a smaller one for the 4-6th graders with just a couple of swing sets, some rings, and a soccer field...and this item)

It was basically a box made out of logs, standing on it's side (so the long part goes into the air.) It was six feet across and anywhere from 8 to 10 feet high, and two metal poles, suspended at the top and held at the bottom with chains, going up it. The purpsoe? Why, to climb up, of course! Like the rope from gym class, only outside and even harder to climb, since stainless steel has a lot less friction. We would race each other to see who could climb up to the top the fastest. And in all that time noe of us ever fell. I went back to that playground a few years ago just to see it, and, of course, it was gone. :(

[What Exit?]

I guess it is safe to say that the old Firepoles are all gone from playgrounds now. Those were great and a little scary. I remember we had one on the 3rd grade playground.
We had swing gates, great for the accidental high speed smack to a distracted fellow playgrounder.
There was a giant climbing frame of chains that went 12'+ high. (4th grade I believe).
It was all great.

See-saws and swings were the boring safe equipment back then.

Of course we had to watch out for Saber-toothed Tigers.

[Chanteuse]

Another one here who played "Smear the Queer" at recess. And I'm a girl! And no, boys didn't play separately--it was definitely a coed game. We also played "Pop the Whip." Everybody joins hands (to make one long snake) and the leader starts running, taking all kinds of twists and turns. The poor kids at the end of the snake had to hang on for dear life and more often than not, were sent flying across the playground.

At my daughter's school, they play jump rope, but not the way we did when I was in school. The teachers turn the rope and they tap the child on the ankle three times before they begin--to give them warning, you see. None of that dangerous jumping into an already turning rope for them!

[norinew]

The only sucky thing was that the slides got too hot, or when they weren't "slippy" enough, and you kind of didn't slide so much as jerk down. Not much fun.
Not "slippy" enough? Why, that's what the sand box is for! You take a bucket of sand from the sand box, climb to the ladder at the top of the slide, and pour the sand down the slide! Voila! Instant slippiness!

Oh, and I loved this part of the article: "Kids aren't using them the way they're supposed to," said the agency's director, Donna Thompson
Yes, Og forbid our kids should be innovative in the way they play with stuff! :rolleyes:

[Sierra Indigo]

That's what we called it in Australia too.

No ball involved; just lots of pummelling.

If coop was a RAAF brat, and was attending a RAAF school, it's a fair guess the name was spawned by some kids from Australia.

Down here in Adelaide it shared the names "British Bulldog" and "Red Rover". Both games were the same, and resulted in massive pummelling.

Our other favourite game was to get a tennis ball, soak it thoroughly and then whip it at the runners as hard as you could. Kinda like a masochistic version of dodgeball. That left some massive bruises, and some kid even got his nose broken. But none of our parents sued.

[lno]

We also played "Pop the Whip." Everybody joins hands (to make one long snake) and the leader starts running, taking all kinds of twists and turns. The poor kids at the end of the snake had to hang on for dear life and more often than not, were sent flying across the playground.We called it Crack the Whip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_the_Whip), which apparently dates back to 1890s England. I want to go play that game now.

[SisterCoyote]

Now, I noticed that they've recently replaced the good, sturdy steel playground equipment with plastic.

Yeah, and I think that plastic shit is more dangerous than the good old steel shit given the charge you build up.

Or, as my friend's four-year-old put it: "No, AuntCoyote, you touch the bars before you touch me. I don't wanna zap."

[Sierra Indigo]

I remember cracking my head on steel monkey bars, pinching my fingers in swingsets innumerable times, getting splinters from the wooden framework, getting burned on the slide in the middle of a 40degC summer, and landing flat on my ass and knocking the wind out of myself from falling off of a merry-go-round after trying to stand up when someone was making it go 'round uber-fast.

My mum told me to be more careful. And I was, so I didn't (hardly) end up doing those things again.

[smiling bandit]

And people wonder why kids get into trouble. THey can't do anything anymore - but kids love to roughhouse. Roughhousing is practically all they do! Geez, we may as well just send them to school from dawn to dusk, and never let them leave class.

[Hung Mung]

Our other favourite game was to get a tennis ball, soak it thoroughly and then whip it at the runners as hard as you could. Kinda like a masochistic version of dodgeball. That left some massive bruises, and some kid even got his nose broken. But none of our parents sued.
We used to play a game called Wall Ball. It involved as many people as you could get together, a tennis ball and a wall of sufficient height. One person throws the ball at the wall and everyone tries to catch it on the bounce. Not only is the ensuing scrum an adventure, the only other rules were these: If you touch the ball without catching it, you have to run for the wall and touch it. Should someone get the ball and hit the wall with it before you touch, you have to assume the position on the wall and they get a free shot at your backside (we generally designated the head as off-limits, with penalties).

[Sierra Indigo]

We used to play a game called Wall Ball. It involved as many people as you could get together, a tennis ball and a wall of sufficient height. One person throws the ball at the wall and everyone tries to catch it on the bounce. Not only is the ensuing scrum an adventure, the only other rules were these: If you touch the ball without catching it, you have to run for the wall and touch it. Should someone get the ball and hit the wall with it before you touch, you have to assume the position on the wall and they get a free shot at your backside (we generally designated the head as off-limits, with penalties).

See, and games like this taught us to be fast, ruthless and not the last one up against the wall. Or to get searing, painful revenge on the butthead who left a whopping great bloody bruise on our arses.

I see where this is heading. They're trying to train the next generation of corporate drones early. Kids today are going to be all about "fairness" and "equitability" and "shifting paradigms". Soon they're going to put cubes in schools. Refer to playtime as "Networking the plastic jungle".

Spooky.

[badbadrubberpiggy]

We called it Crack the Whip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_the_Whip), which apparently dates back to 1890s England. I want to go play that game now.

We called it Crack the Whip! Also, like Trunk, we called the ball game "Kill the Man with the Ball". We also played dodgeball - in gym class, no less! And nobody died! Nobody even got seriously injured! The worst injury I remember from middle school was a kid who broke his arm while playing football at recess, and IIRC, that was just because he landed on it badly, not because he was tackled, though it was over 10 years ago.

Yeah, dodgeball hurts, but not that much. Crack the Whip or whatever you call it won't hurt you.

All this makes me wonder what kind of playground equipment will be available when I have kids. Maybe I should start buying some of the fun stuff while it still exists and store it away for later*



*By "store" I mean I'll set said equipment up in our living room and climb on it like an oversized spider monkey.

[mhendo]

We used to play a game called Wall Ball. It involved as many people as you could get together, a tennis ball and a wall of sufficient height. One person throws the ball at the wall and everyone tries to catch it on the bounce. Not only is the ensuing scrum an adventure, the only other rules were these: If you touch the ball without catching it, you have to run for the wall and touch it. Should someone get the ball and hit the wall with it before you touch, you have to assume the position on the wall and they get a free shot at your backside (we generally designated the head as off-limits, with penalties).We played a similar game, only we called it "Branding."

[whiterabbit]

I never really got hurt on a playground, and I think I came along just as they were starting to phase out the good stuff (I'm 29). That being said, if I'd broken an arm...I'd have been taken to a hospital. I can't imagine lawyers being involved unless I'd died or something.

[KSO]

Right after 9/11, all the networks showed footage of an al Qaeda training camp, which included the terrorists training on the exact same monkey bars we had at my elementary school--the plain rectangular metal ones where you could either haul yourself up on top and crawl to the other side or do a sort of alternating hanging climb from end to end, or just hang there while other kids pried your fingers off the bar, or hang upside down and hope you didn't slip. I did slip once and ended up with most of my face scraped off from the sand.

Our playground was separated into two areas, one for the smaller kids and one for the bigger kids, separated by a short chain link fence. One game was to run at the fence, and swing yourself over the top without losing a finger.

I miss those days.

[ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness]

The equipment I really miss is the Fun House. It was a wooden cylinder on rollers, about 5 feet in diameter, enclosed in a fiberglass house. Essentially it was a giant hamster wheel, where kids got inside and all ran in one direction, causing the cylinder to rotate. The taller kids would stand at the end of the tube and grab the top while bracing their legs at the bottom and allow themselves to be rotated completely upside-down. By the time I was tall enough to try it (late 1970s), they had disappeared from both local playgrounds that had one. Lots of pain as you would fall once the cylinder got spinning too fast, and other kids would fall on top of you or step on your fingers as you tried to get up.

Ahh, nostalgia...

As I take my children to the playground, I have noticed I prefer the newer plastic slides to the old metal ones (the local park has both). We get a lot of fog off the ocean, and when the metal ones get damp, you stick. The plastic ones stay slippery when wet.

Oh yeah, here in Southern California, we played "British Bulldog" at Boy Scout meetings. (1977-1980) It was always announced in advance, so we knew to wear jeans and T-shirts instead of our scout uniforms to that week's troop meeting. We had parental blessing to get messed up! Although we had a no-tackling rule. It was two-handed touch, like in touch football. Of course, a two-handed touch at full speed is really a shove.

[BiblioCat]

Oh, and my cousin Dominic froze his lips to the monkey bars.Did someone Triple-Dog Dare him to do it? :D :D

[Guinastasia]

Once at a family reunion picnic, my cousins and I improvised by taking a hose, hooking it up the water pump at the picnic grounds, and slinging it over the top of the slide, creating a water slide! Only after a few times going down, it ended up being a mudslide. Damn, that was fun. (And hell, I wasn't a little kid, I think I was thirteen).

Sandboxes-well, I can see their point. Who wants to play in a sandbox that reeks of cat piss? Yuck.

[danceswithcats]

Agreed that the older steel and concrete/asphalt playgrounds were better.

[Own thread minor hijack] Had lunch with a friend who is a forensic engineer. He reports and testifies in matters of accident reconstruction, and we commiserated about our overly litigious society.
A fairly new-ultra safe park nearby has been sued by an adult, who claims he broke his ankle while walking on wood chips. The wood chips were placed so the kiddies don't have to deal with falling on earth, asphalt, or concrete. The plaintiff alleges that the wood chips presented "an unstable, hazardous, and inherently dangerous" walking surface. [/Otmh]

Honestly, I'm at a loss. After a playground accident, my greatest concern was the hell Mom would give me for ripping, bleeding on, or grass staining my clothing.

[MsRobyn]

Knorf, I saw that figure, and I think it's a bit inaccurate. I think a statistical analysis should be done to distinguish accidents caused by the negligence of the district and accidents not caused by district negligence. That is, I think the district should take responsibility for injuries caused by improperly maintained equipment or lack of proper supervision, but shouldn't be forced to take responsibility for injuries it had no part in. I'd also like to see a breakdown of injuries it paid for. How many fractures, cuts, concussions, etc.? Basically, I'm wondering how many claims were for serious injuries due to its own negligence and how many were for relatively minor injuries that happened because kids just get into accidents.

That said, however, no amount of plastic is going to be safe if it's not maintained properly. Fasteners need to be tightened, rough edges need to be smoothed, rubber mats need to be replaced. I know schools are strapped for cash, but if they're going to have playground equipment at all, it needs to be kept up.

[fluiddruid]

It looks like this trip down Memory Lane has led this thread right to MPSIMS territory, so I'm moving it out of the Pit.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Am I the only person who [b]hasn't[b] seen a tether ball in years?

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Am I the only person who [b]hasn't[b] seen a tether ball in years?

...or a properly coded post?

[Sierra Indigo]

Am I the only person who [b]hasn't[b] seen a tether ball in years?

I saw one in Shaun of the Dead. He used it to kill a zombie :D

But truthfully, I've seen some pissant little tiny plastic-and-wiffleball thing on sale in a department store, once. That made me sad.

[BiblioCat]

Am I the only person who [b]hasn't[b] seen a tether ball in years?They're all in the Secret Playground Supply closet with the Lawn Darts.

[Harborwolf]

We had a game where you tried to run from one end of the swingset to the other and not get kicked in the head by the swingers. That game was for sissies. We actually stayed off the swings and threw them at the kids trying to cross. I earned a nice little scar from that game, right over the eye. ;)

We would also have pinecone fights and had a whole baseball diamond set aside for that and snowball fights in winter. As long as we kept it in the designated area, we were cool with the monitors.

After all, if their kid was stupid enough to jump off the top of the monkey bars, he got what he deserved.
That was always the parental mindset when I was a lad. If we got hurt, it was because we did something stupid.

[Sierra Indigo]

That was always the parental mindset when I was a lad. If we got hurt, it was because we did something stupid.

And I think we've hit the nail on the head, right there. In this era of Indigo Children and Everyone's To Blame Except Me, little Dakottaa and SkylerTorrenceLee's injuries can't possibly have been caused by their own stupidity now, could they? It had to have been the archaic, unsafe and horribly DEADLY playground equipment put in place by the council (who hates kids, of course). I know from my own mishaps that kids can injure themselves on the most innocuous of playground surfaces, so I don't see how doing anything short of wrapping them in rubber bouncy-suits and not letting them climb more than an inch off of the ground is going to prevent some stupid kid from damaging themself.

If we ever have kids, I'm building them a steel-and-asphalt playset out the back. And possibly surrounding it with sharks. And lava. That'll teach them to be careful.

[What Exit?]

...snip...
If we ever have kids, I'm building them a steel-and-asphalt playset out the back. And possibly surrounding it with sharks. And lava. That'll teach them to be careful.

Make sure the Sharks have LASERS and the Dogs shoot bees from their mouths.

[flamingbananas]

Taking out swings ferchristsake is crazy. Those are one of the best things to play on! We'd always start swinging really high then jump off when we were ten feet or so above the ground onto the woodchips. I got some nasty splinters landing.


I played Red Rover and Crack the Whip during recess. I grew up mostly during the 90s so my elementary school got rid of the concrete, steel, and wood playground and switched to the plastic ones when I was in third grade, I think. The old wood one had this bridge and we'd play Popcorn on it. One person would sit in the middle of the bridge in a ball and three other people or so would jump on the edges to make the person fall off.
As far as injuries go I ran into a metal pole during a game of tag and hit my head and I believe someone broke their arm during a rather violent game of Red Rover.

[Chanteuse]

I remember tether ball! That is really a fun game, but, I'm sure, much too dangerous for the schools to even consider. :rolleyes: And who here recalls falling off the seesaw just as you reach the high point? I know I do!! But my kids won't, that's for sure. Not that I'd want them to fall, of course, but it seems that anything we enjoyed as kids has been deemed too hazardous for our own children. It's a pity, really.

I've been laughing my butt off reading this thread and remembering this stuff. No doubt we're all lucky to have made it to adulthood! :D

[Max the Immortal]

At my elementary school, Red Rover was about as safe as it got. Most of the time, all of boys would play-fight. The difference between play-fighting and real fightings is that in play fighting, the privates (and I think the face) are off-limits. So, we'd pretty much just beat the shit out of each other for forty minutes, in teams with rapidly shifting alliances. I was the strongest boy in my class, feared even by some boys who were a year ahead of me. It was glorious. In winter, we would (again in teams) built forts and bunkers out of snow and try to conquer them from one another. This made Canadian winters not merely bearable, but flat-out awesome :D . King of the Hill was one of the few named games we played. The snow plows would clear parts of the school grounds, making hills of snow ten to twenty feet high. The game was simple: Get to the top of the hill and stay there as long as possible. Get the other kids off the hill by any means necessary. Violence ensues.

Now, there is hope for the new generation: An acquaintance of mine has a young son. She once mentioned to me how when he and his friends play (at least away from the schoolyard), they beat the shit out of each other, just like my generation did. If one of the boys gets hurt (not injured, but past the "it doesn't hurt" barrier), he stops to catch his breath. The mom asks, "Have you had enough?"; invariably, the boy says "No!" and rejoins the fray. The tradition lives on.

[Barbarian]

Taking out swings ferchristsake is crazy. Those are one of the best things to play on! We'd always start swinging really high then jump off when we were ten feet or so above the ground onto the woodchips. I got some nasty splinters landing.

I used to do that onto grass, since I'd fly outside the range of the sand surrounding the swings. No broken bones on me!
:D

[Cat Whisperer]

<snip> King of the Hill was one of the few named games we played. The snow plows would clear parts of the school grounds, making hills of snow ten to twenty feet high. The game was simple: Get to the top of the hill and stay there as long as possible. Get the other kids off the hill by any means necessary. Violence ensues.
<snip>
Ah, King of the Hill. Best winter game EVER! And of course, our version of Crack the Whip was played on ice skates - imagine how fast the end of *that* whip gets going. As for getting your lips frozen to something metal outside, that's just part of your Canadian citizenship. You don't get to vote here if you've never frozen part of you to something metal in winter. Most of us had siblings to help us achieve this citizenship goal.

[Ms Macphisto]

I've long found it hilarious that as the cool old playground equipment has slowly vanished, the one place I did get fairly seriously injured was the last of the metal stuff to be removed from one playground in Stanley Park. The summer I was 4 (so we're talking 1983) I slipped while climbing a ladder on a climbing thing shaped like a submarine and split my chin wide open. Blood everywhere, many stiches and a scar underneath my chin that's still quite impressive but luckily not very visible. Of course, the merry-go-round, teeter-totters, and big metal slide in that same playground disappeared years ago, but that submarine was there until quite recently.

Oh, and even though my father's a lawyer, no one even thought of suing. In fact, I got a little talk about how I might want to avoid going climbing in flip-flops in the future, since that's what caused me to lose my footing.

[Sleel]

We called it "Smear the Queer" too, and I didn't know what a queer was until I was about 14 or so. I was actually pretty good at that game since I can run really fast for short distances. The crowd often wouldn't be able to catch me until I got tired. If we were allowing it that day, we'd be able to pass off to someone else when we got tired or too boxed in. Other days, you couldn't play it "the pussy way" but had to be tackled, immobilized, or have the ball stripped from you.

When I was 6, I opened a gash in my knee that went all the way to the bone while playing tag; no equipment involved. I ripped out a fingernail on my ring finger on the chain-link backstop on the baseball field. I didn't mean for it to happen, but it matched the ring finger on the other hand that I'd smashed in the door on a windy day. We didn't have those nice pneumatic door closers and our halls were badly oriented so that the prevailing winds ran right down the halls.

We used to try and make the swings do a loop over the bar. We'd never make it since A) It's pretty damn close to impossible to get the swing moving that fast just from pumping your legs, and B) The pucker-factor was high and we'd usually chicken out. I still remember that second of weightlessness before the jerk as you came back under the full control of gravity. We never managed to break the chains, though one of the fat kids did manage to bend the triangular hook that holds those super-tough rubber seats on the chains. He fell off and dragged across the sand. I used to savor the sting in my feet when I got some good height/distance by jumping off at the top of the arc.

Speaking of chickens, we used to play a game on the monkey bars called "Chicken Fight" where you tried to wrap your legs around your opponent in an attempt to pull him/her off the bars. Maximum studliness was achieved when you could pull them off and still hold yourself and the other kid on the bars for a second before dropping to the ground. I remember one of us landing flat on his back with the winner on top of him. It's a wonder he didn't crack some ribs.

We got into more trouble and had more injuries with just an open field than these poor kids could probably imagine. Even up to high school there were kind of dangerous games we did. We played skins 'n' shirts two-hand-touch football in 35-40º F weather with fog so thick you could barely see 10 yards. Everything was so wet that you'd slide like crazy. I remember spraining my index finger so badly I couldn't bend it fully for a month because I slipped in the mud and grass. I've still got an enlarged knuckle from that.

It's good for ya. Builds character.

[Ranchoth]

There's supposed to be a continuum of pain, and as a kid you learn not to get too high on that scale-- but remove the continuum, and kids go straight from 'safe' to 'dead' without any learning steps.

Maybe that's the point..maybe .the people behind the "safe" playgrounds aren't candyasses, they're a fiendish cabal of eugenicists!

By the way...I guess we're all agreed that all Bush jokes now have to be three feet tall, and topped with PVC piping?

[sciurophobic]

Am I the only person who [b]hasn't[b] seen a tether ball in years?

Isn't there one in Napoleon Dynamite?

[zenith]

Uber-safe playgrounds are dangerous. Put all that rubber matting down, with boring equipment, and kids now end up doing crazier shit than I ever did because they don't get hurt.

There's supposed to be a continuum of pain, and as a kid you learn not to get too high on that scale-- but remove the continuum, and kids go straight from 'safe' to 'dead' without any learning steps.

The same could be said of older kids who are given modern stability-controlled, antilock-braked, multi-airbagged vehicles by both drivers' ed programs and by their parents for their daily use once they are "trained".

If I was running driver's ed I'd put 'em in old stuff with bias-ply tires and drum brakes all around and instead of having 'em sit around a classroom watching movies when the weather was rainy/icy/snowy, I'd get'em out there in a big empty parking lot learning to cope with what might happen if Daddy's new Lexus suffered an electronic brainfart.

[Anne Neville]

We used to try and make the swings do a loop over the bar. We'd never make it since A) It's pretty damn close to impossible to get the swing moving that fast just from pumping your legs, and B) The pucker-factor was high and we'd usually chicken out. I still remember that second of weightlessness before the jerk as you came back under the full control of gravity.

See Mythbusters, episode 34 (http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/episode/episode.html). That was a fun one :D

[GusNSpot]

I'm 62 ..... Just think of the things I got to play on / with when I was a kid...... Bawaahahaha
I have driven an 48 Ford regular everyday car and a 32 Dodge panel truck with a cloth top that was my Mom's regular car. We could have our long guns in the window racks of our pickem up trucks in the school parking lot.

4th of July fun included forts and slingshots and cherry bombs roman candles and bottle rockets.....

When I went into the Army, I was the fastest foxhole digger. I had been practicin for years........

We had ropes and actual grapevines in the big trees of the woods nearby...... Tarzan had nothing on us.

Most fun as a local group was the day we had 12 kids in an 18' canoe with one life jacket, two cushions and one inner tube and 6 paddles. Age range was 4 - 14. Lake patrol came up as we were screaming and splashing and was going to take us all in because we did not have enough life jackets.

We just flipped the canoe and all swam off in different directions. Shore was only about 200 yards away and the youngest headed that way while the older of us headed even farther out into the lake. The patrol was left to get the canoe and paddles and stuff as our parents sat on the cliffs above and laughed..... The lake patrol learned to leave us alone.......... We used to have to swim out to the chanal maker and back before breakfast every day of the summer. About 1/4 mile each way. We all did it by age 4.

::: law does not say you have to have a life jacket to go swimming Bawahahaha :::

[elfbabe]

You poor child (though I could have sworn you were about my age...but maybe up in Canada it's all different. :p )

Hey, my location says "Ottawa, finally". I grew up in Wisconsin. (And I'm 21, by the way.)

My current goal is to find and play on a teeter-totter or merry-go-round somewhere in Ottawa. Anyone in the Ottawa area is welcome to join me, particularly if you know where any of these things are.


Oh, and when I told my boyfriend about this thread, I got to hear some of his stories. He grew up in the countryside outside of Ottawa, and he and his friends had to improvise a lot of games due to lack of playground equipment. A couple of their favo(u)rites were the "Double T", where they would pick up one kid's little brother and drop him on his head, and "Hit Mr. Man", where one kid, Kyle, would hang upside down from a trapeze by his knees, and everyone else would... well... hit him. Repeatedly, and really hard. Oddly enough, Kyle really liked this game and was always suggesting that they play it. Gotta wonder what happened to him...

[Guinastasia]

Hell, when I was little, and my parents put up my swing set, they didn't bother to cement the frame in. My cousin and I used to make a game of trying to make the frame rock back and forth when we were on the teeter-totter.

I think there's a tether ball at the elementary school were my mother works. I've heard her mention it. I've never come across one, so I wouldn't know.

[Cartooniverse]

Oh man. How pathetic. Are these the same children whose parents scamper off to the Capitol Building to mold the laws that govern our mighty nation, but who are frantically calling an attorney the second their child scrapes a knee?

Time was. I was 8, in the 3rd grade. A fellow with a very unusual name came to play. We walked up the block to the old Community Center, and were playing on an all-red steel tubing stagecoach, which was sorta kinda like this one (http://www.mc-mncppc.org/parks/park_of_the_day/park_images/Becca-05.jpg), but all metal tubing including the wheels.

My friend and I were hanging upside down by the backs of our knees, which used to be a time-honored childhood passtime until it was outlawed...... He fell suddenly and landed on his head on the tubing of the wheel.

Unconscious boy. For... a minute? More? Seemed a few eternities to me, but was likely just a minute. He awoke, very scared. Cause, he didn't know me. At all. Didn't know his own name. Didn't recognize his parents when they drove over to get him. Didn't know much of anything. Most of it came back in the coming months, but not all of it. That accident was the end of a nice friendship.

Now? My parents and I and my brother would have lived in abject poverty forever because of the lawsuit. The Community Center would have closed from the cost of the lawsuit. And of course, my friend would have had the same level of injury.

Kids run, jump, turn, tumble wrestle, fall and get hurt. Rarely are they badly injured, but yeah it happens. It's how we learn to be cautious. Through first-hand experience.

Design a playground that bans running and is so plastic-soft-padded-safe that it lacks any edge or thrill or excitement, and you've stopped making playgrounds.

Pitiful. Just pitiful.

Cartooniverse

[danceswithcats]

Dear GusNSpot-we need people from your stock. Breed a few more. ;)

Across the street from my elementary school (gr 1-6) was a farm, and a number of us would go over to John's place after school if our parents said it was OK. We'd climb up to the upper level of the barn, and then jump out. Not into hay, but hay wagons. Flat wood. BANG! Why we never broke bones still amazes me. Any injuries were comforted by John's Mom, and that was the end of it.