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Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently motivated fool. Just imagine the lengths (and distance from supervision) kids will have to go to in order to hurt themselves now. At least with schoolyard swing sets we knew where and how it happened.
Oh, Dave. It’s a beautiful piece, but it drives me to despair.
My brother at age 8 was jumping off the garage roof, so my little sister, age 3 and me age 6, did as well. We lived without anything broken but little sister with a bitten tongue tattled on us. Wonder how many law suits will be brought against Obama for his failure to protect the people of this country. Why hasn’t someone already filed a suit, because he did take an oath?
Having grown up with a survival of the fittest school play yard with swings with wooden seats held on with chains and old-school monkey bars perched over gravel, and finger amputating see-saws I have up close and personal experience with the injuries play equipment can inflict
Regrettably like a pendulum we’ve swung to the other extreme, passing the midpoint at maximum velocity.
Taking down swings with those wimpy rubber seats (that you can’t stand up on properly) seems excessive, but if I were a taxpayer I wouldn’t want to be on the hook for the bills.
As ever, Dave, saucy and sweet all at once…Remind me to tell you the one about the sister [aged 7] playing catch-up with the manual wheelchair on the sidewalk – while its occupant [aged 8] had/needed no seat belt (and both lived to tell the tale). Ahh, freedom!
We have a very long and steep hill about a block from where I grew up. We would, on occasion, hike up that hill carrying any sort of wheeled vehicle. Big wheels (remember those?), bicycles, skateboards roller skates and the like were held, mounted, and then released with their rider, to the will of gravity.
My cousin owned a Knight Rider big wheel with the special skid out hand break that allowed you to fishtail in your parent’s driveway or nearly any surface that was smooth enough to ride on. Imagine that hand brake getting pulled halfway down a 30% grade, 1/4 mile long hill, headed towards the blind 4 way stop at the bottom. It brings new meaning to the term vertigo.
Those were the days.
Ah, but swings are not the only dangers children face on the playground.
http://youtu.be/Rqv38fP7cr0
Oh Dave. My 6 sibs grew up as you did. Free. There were some serious scrapes and fingers with shrapnel. Loosened teeth. But like you – we made it and are the resilient, crazy clan we are today because of it.
BUT: The threat to our safety due to the border/disease crisis is something we never experienced. Our scientist son is encouraging family and friends to get ready. It’s only a matter of time. It’s time to store food, water and prescription drugs for what he fears is the coming crisis of Ebola shutting down communities with panic and quarantines. He prays he’s wrong. But we’re all preparing.
Honestly, if this sort of thing was motivated by a desire to protect children, I would be much more sympathetic to such efforts, even if wrongheaded. I haven’t embraced the “It Takes a Villiage“ mindset, but I think we all have an obligation to protect children from themselves. Being imperfect, some of us will take that obligation too far, and others not far enough, but the most important thing is that we accept the obligation.
Unfortunately, the inclination toward such sillyness is more often an effort to limit tortious liability than to protect, and it’s not limited to children. This is one example of the main reason why I think the courts are the most dangerous branch of government. If the legislature passes a bad or unjust law, it’s explicit and people know about it. If law enforcement oversteps its bounds, we read about it in the paper. If judges allow people to be sued because kids do stupid things, each injustice has the appearance of justice, even while degrading liberty. It’s subtle, insidious, and distructive.
Ah, the good old days. And good (freedom!) they were.
The child-proofing industry (read: government/the ABA) has evolved into t’weens, then teenagers, and now adults. Cars these days are loaded with ‘safety systems.’ The more they add, the less aware we become about what is around us. We’re relying too heavily on technology to think and act for us when we should be paying more attention to the act of driving and everything that entails. Some say people drove more safely in the days when a baby sat on mom’s lap while dad drove. (Somehow we made it home from the hospital just fine.) We also used our common sense with respect to poisons, etc., and kept them out of harm’s way. Those things cost less back then; we didn’t have to pay for someone else’s stupidity which resulted in lawsuits, labeling, etc.
The cost of raising a child these days which includes so many gov’t-mandated ‘stuff’ is mind boggling.
And now swings. Good grief. My father (engineer) made a terrific rope swing between two trees (an architectural wonder) that swung out over the alley. One could get much momentum by standing on the board seat – enough to nearly reach the neighbor’s back yard across from ours. That swing (and the several pairs of stilts he made – again engineering-ly perfect) made our big backyard the most popular in the neighborhood. Scrapes and bruises -and one friend’s broken arm – yes, but that’s what childhood is.
I forgot about the great fun we’d have at my aunt and uncle’s farm. My cousins were the same age as my brother and I so the four of us would take turns rolling down hill in the inside of a tractor inner tube. Not an easy thing to do. One of the other fun things was in the barn where my uncle would leave a big pile of straw on the main floor. We would climb to the top of the barn by using the hay bales, then run along the rafters and jump that distance down into the straw.
Those were only two of the antics. Such fun to be a child pre-helmet days.
Saw a toddler on a tricycle in her driveway – flat and opened into the end of a rarely-used cul-de-sac. She was wearing a helmet. I almost started to cry at that sight…
Was looking over the mishaps of childrens’ cousins, coming up blank with stuff… until I ran into the cousins who is the child of divorce.
His father accuses his mother of causing stuff that’s on video as being there when he’s handed over at the police station, and tried to get custody shifted over him tripping on the playground and knocking out his own teeth.
“Psychotic blankers who care not for the kid but lots for harming the custodial parent” probably counts for a lot….
I am so glad I was a child in the 1950s and 1960s. I feel sorry for my future grandchildren. (Or perhaps more for my children if they try to allow their kids the type of childhood I had and Quilter and I allowed our children to have.)
Seawriter
I grew up on a farm, in the 70s. I had a tire on a rope hung from a tree branch, and the machinery in the grove. My dad eventually put up a swingset, but I probably logged more hours on (and in) the combine and the corn picker.
“… you can’t child-proof children, …”
If you build an idiot-proof device, someone will build a better idiot.
Dave,
Did you ever use waxed paper on that big slide? On a warm day we could really get that thing polished and slick. I always preferred Waxtex brand as the best.
Dave, you and Papa Toad would’ve been friends as boys. Maybe he could show you some of his scars sometime… I mostly learned from not doing what damaged my older siblings, so I don’t have as good stories…
Here at Toad Hall, we have a big maple tree out front with two wooden swings. One is right near some large rocks, and careless swingers discover what happens when they and the rock collide. It teaches care pretty well.
My tadpoles like to fly about on our swings at about 8:15 am, just about the time the other kids are being picked up by the schoolbus.
I weep for the children who get 15 minute recesses in our school district.
My wife loved this…. and she broke her arm as a girl when she jumped off a swing.