Are We Taking Fun Out Of Childhood?

I was driving past an elementary school playground in Rapid City, S.D., the other day when I noticed there was no big slide, no merry-go-round, no teeter-totter and no swings.

A playground wasn’t a playground when I was growing up if it didn’t have these staple playthings. Want to know what happened to them?

It was determined by some nondescript school board that they were too dangerous. Some school district lawyer told the board they could be sued if a child was injured on these dangerous toys. It’s a wonder any of us were able to reach adulthood having been exposed to these killer playground toys.

Are the kids of today wimps? I recall playing tackle football at Holy Rosary Indian Mission wearing hand-me-down football helmets and uniforms salvaged from the 1920s. You could take the helmet, fold it up, and stick it in your back pocket.

If the football games were the sandlot variety, we played barefoot, wearing no shoulder pads or helmets. Did we ever get hurt? You bet. Many timeouts were taken while a player wiped the blood from his nose or went to the sidelines with a shiner or a fat lip.

We didn’t even have baseball caps when we played hardball. The baseball was usually so scuffed, scratched and discolored it was nearly impossible to see as it sped toward your head. Many of us took first base after prying the ball out of our rib cage.

The boys organized a game on the swings that would bring out the riot squad or an emergency ambulance today. We would swing just as high as we could and then we would let go of the swing chains to see how far we could fly. We’d mark the spot where we landed and dare the next guy to beat it.

My first cousin, Frosty Garnette, made the leap from the swing one day but he didn’t land far enough from the swing. On the next time down the empty swing, with iron edges on the seat, clonked him in back of the head. It felled him as if he had been pole axed. He carries a scar to this day.

If enough boys could cram themselves on the merry-go-round, we could get it going around and around so fast it would make us sick. Sometimes we’d get guys on each side and rock it like a boat.

You really had to trust the kid on the other end of the teeter totter. If he jumped off while you were way up in the air, the fall to the ground with the teeter totter between your legs could be quite painful.

Whatever we had to do to the slide to make our descent faster, we did. I remember even using ski wax on it. We’d come down the slide one after the other and if you weren’t quick enough to get up and out of the way, you caught a couple of leather boondockers behind your head.

There is one sentence we would never use: “I’m bored.” How often do you hear the kids of today say that? If I said that around my mom or dad, they would lead me out to the woodpile, put an axe in my hand and say “start chopping.”

But it seems we never had time to be bored. In the summer we’d get up early in the morning, grab a shovel and find a nice damp piece of ground and start digging for angle worms. We’d put the worms in a can, sprinkle some wet dirt over them, grab our fishing poles and head for Kyle Dam. If we couldn’t find any worms, we’d get an old jar, poke holes in the lid, put in some grass or leaves, and then we’d start chasing grasshoppers. When we filled the jar we’d head for the dam. Grasshoppers weren’t as good as worms to catch fish, but they did the job.

Our parents didn’t worry about us, and I don’t recall any kid ever drowning in the dam. When we weren’t fishing, we’d be swimming. We’d be jumping off the highest ledges we could find into the water.

When we got really tired and hungry, we’d head for home. Mom always had something ready for us to eat. Most of the time it would be lima or navy beans and home baked bread. We’d dip the bread in the beans and think we were in seventh heaven.

I suppose I’m writing this because I wonder what this world is coming to when kids can’t ride on a merry-go-round, scoot down the slides, maim each other on the teeter totters, or see how high we can go on the swings.

They’ve taken the fun out of playgrounds. I’m afraid America is fast becoming the land of lawsuits and wimps.

xxxx