At the playground

A neighboring city completed a brand new aquatics complex this past fall. Summer is fast approaching and in the interest of gearing up for a hot summer, Little Man and I paid our first visit this afternoon. (Keep in mind, it's April in south Florida. In other places it's still snowing. But we are already sweating.) Aside from a big, normal pool that happens to have a really nice water slide, the complex features what they refer to as "Spray and Play". It's basically a playground plunked smack into a shallow pool of water, complete with all manner of things that spray water. It's bold, bright, colorful, safe and inviting.

The county built several parks featuring similar water playgrounds in recent years. This one is much closer to our home, it has the least expensive admission and it's the smallest-which is a good thing. It's big enough for Little Man to play and have lots of fun. But it's also small enough for us to be able to easily keep an eye on him even if we are not in the mood to get splashed by a bunch of crazy kiddos. Needless to say, I am impressed. We will most likely be spending a great deal of time there this summer.

Today's excursion got me thinking about the playground I frequented as a child. My old neighborhood public pool was big, boring and square shaped. The only interesting feature it had was a diving board...which I rarely gathered up the nerve to use. Walking across that board was, for me, akin to walking the plank. Except that the term "walking the plank" conjures up romantic images of pirates, treasure chests and swashbuckling. I like pirates and thanks to Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, piracy is rather popular these days. I am however a coward when it comes to water and swimming. I was not a fan of the dreaded diving board. If I were ever to happen upon a band of rogue pirates, in reality "walking the plank" would terrify me. Today's modern water playgrounds didn't exist in my day.

Come to think of it, today's modern (non-water) playgrounds didn't exist in my day. Our favorite neighborhood parks for Little Man are like the water playgrounds; bold, bright, colorful, safe and inviting. The nicest ones have awnings to shade from the overly bright Florida sun. They have rubberized flooring; the better to avoid scrapped knees, elbows and hands. They feature colorful metal and plastic surfaces with no sharp edges or corners. They look fun. They say, "Come and play!" Parents sitting off to the side can easily see their kids as they move through the play structures.

The neighborhood playground I grew up on was the polar opposite of today's playgrounds. It was not colorful or safe. But it was inviting. It's call was different. It said, "Come explore! Travel to far off lands and exciting new places." I so wish I had a photograph of it, but unfortunately I do not. My husband grew up in a neighboring community and played there often (we never met as children), so I asked him if he remembered how big it was.

It was a concrete structure sculpted from bags of cement. It was the color of cement; that is, it was gray. Dirt and other dark stuff collected in all the cracks and crevices, which actually gave it a beautiful patina. In terms of aesthetics it was a wondrous and huge organic sculpture. It had lovely textures and visual movement. It was a work of art. It was beautiful in a way that modern playgrounds couldn't approach.

We thought of it as a mountain. When you are a small child your view of the world is very different than that of an adult. So what seemed mammoth and vast to me as a child, probably wasn't all that big in reality. Unfortunately it's very difficult for me to gauge the size of something that no longer exists. My husband and I suspect it was close to 2 stories high, give or take a few feet.

It had asphalt pathways meandering through it. It had nooks and crannies galore, along with a length of metal (probably steel) monkey bars that must have been a good 7 or 8 feet off the ground and a long metal slide (again probably steel) that ran from the tip top of the structure down into the sandpit below. During the height of summer heat I'm sure one could have fried an egg on that slide. It certainly fried my butt and the back of my legs a number of times. There were a few areas that had cement walls; it was rumored that years before there had been tunnels, which had been blocked up by said walls. As a child I remember wondering why on earth anyone would be stupid enough to block up tunnels in such a wonderful place. A tunnel would be fun to hide in!

Being a concrete structure it was not kind to small knees, elbows and any manner of fleshy parts. I scrapped myself up countless times playing there. It was surrounded by a moat of sand which had several small islands (2 sets of swings and a mini-slide for the "babies"). In our world of play that mountain was a far off planet, a castle, a pirate ship, any number of wondrous and exotic places. King Kong lived on our mountain. The sand under the monkey bars contained dragons, sharks, alligators, any manner of fantastical beasts. Sometimes it became a game; one kid would cross the bars and below some of us would jump up trying to catch him or her. If you were crossing the monkey bars you did NOT want to fall in.

I grew up at a time when I could safely hop on my bike Saturday morning and wave goodbye to my mom and we had the mutual unspoken knowledge that we would see each other again in a few hours. My mom had no way of contacting me and conversely I couldn't contact her, until I got home. I would never in a million years allow my son to do that. I can't allow it. His world is not the same world I grew up in. I was 8 years old when the Adam Walsh case broke the news. But back then the incident was, for the most part, considered completely out of the ordinary. Today you simply cannot allow your kids to wander off by themselves. Not in a world where kids disappear much more frequently and Amber Alerts are becoming depressingly commonplace.

A client of mine had a birthday party at my old park a few years ago. When I arrived I was stunned and heartbroken to see that my cement mountain was gone. In it's place is a shiny, colorful and modern play structure. But as an adult I know that mountain must have been a litigious nightmare. Aside from the fact that concrete is just not a kind surface for small children to play on, all those nooks and crannies were great hiding places. Thankfully nothing bad ever happened to me there, but I can only imagine that they could have been very inviting to someone with dark intentions. There was a neighborhood guy who always made my mental radar scream with bright red lights and sirens. (DANGER!!!) No one ever told me to stay away from him, I just knew. Sometimes he came to hang out at our park. If I ever saw him heading in our direction I left. That was years before I ever heard the term "pedophile". I knew to stay away from him; that he was not safe.

As an adult I lament that my son won't have a magical and fantastical place like that. He won't have the opportunities that we had to be able to create his own world like that either. He will never be able to disappear out the front door the way we did as kids. His manner of play will be very different from what mine was. I can console myself with the knowledge that my husband and I play with him very differently than our parents played with us. Our parents didn't play with us. They just sent us on our way without the concerns or worries we have now.