I feel like playground equipment has changed a lot since I was a kid. Apparently, they decided that playgrounds were a disaster. We didn’t know that back then. They were always seen as a good day trip for the kids because they were usually free and you would spend a half a day there, and then a half a day in the emergency room. The main purpose of playgrounds was to provide a structured space in which to teach kids the laws of physics and the numerous ways it could kill you.
For example, I haven’t seen a see-saw in years. If you’re too young to remember, a see-saw is like a catapult but it was evenly balanced only when no one was on it. The way it worked was you would get on with your friend and then it would quickly become obvious which one of you was the heavier child. And then the lighter child would sit at the top with his feet dangling and scream, “Don’t get off, don’t get off, don’t get off!” and the heavier kid would get off, and the lighter kid would go SLAM!
Whoever designed it was like, “Yeah! All kids are roughly the same weight…”
The first safety measure they did in some parks was add a half tire sticking out of the ground under each child. That was a very big thing in parks when I was growing up—tires sticking out of the ground. They didn’t know what else to do with old tires. There was also this attraction sometimes where it was just 20 tires sticking out of the ground and you’d have to jump from one to the other.Then you would fall and have tire treads on the side of your face, and when you’d come home your parents would ask, “Did you get hit by a truck?”
Then there was the merry-go-round. You know that Gravitron ride at the amusement park where you get into a huge clothes dryer that spins you around and you stick to the walls? Well this is like, “What if we have that, but it’s manual powered and there are no walls?”
The one thing I’m surprised still exists is swings. Because talking about obstacle courses, this was one where if you walk around obliviously, you get kicked in the head. There was just a row of them. And then some of these swings were shaped like an animal that had a stake driven through its head but was smiling anyway because of brain damage. Ever get hit with one of those? They would send you across the park.
Not to mention the tire swings. Those did not even have a predictable trajectory. They’d go in whatever direction they felt like as the three or four nauseous kids sitting on it kept bumping heads, and the back of their legs kept getting wet from whatever liquid had been sitting inside the tire.
There sure were a lot of tires involved in playgrounds back then.
If we wanted to climb around, we had jungle gyms. A jungle gym is like—you know the scaffolding outside a building when they’re doing construction? Well, the way a jungle gym worked was that a bunch of kids would climb it, and then whoever made it to the top first would just sit there. Because what else do you do once you’re up there? There’s no slide.
You could fall if you want, but then you hit every bar on the way down.
There were other climbing things too. Every playground had a cement turtle for no reason. The way you played on that was that basically, you’d go sit on the turtle. Why a turtle? Nobody knew. But the one rule of the park was that every time you came, you had to take a picture with all your siblings on the turtle.
Another thing that I’m surprised they took away was water fountains. Those were probably the most dangerous. The water pressure was never right on those things. It would either be so high that it would shoot straight over the water fountain, or it would be so low that people were sucking on the spigot. And your turn lasted only as long as you could hold the button down with your thumb, except for smaller kids, who couldn’t push the button AND they couldn’t reach the water, yet they wanted a turn anyway, so their older sibling would have to hold them up with one hand and push the button with the other hand then use their chin to nudge the kid’s face into the stream of water. And he’d suck on the spigot.
Slides still exist, but they’re different.
When I was growing up, slides were standalone structures that towered over the playground, glistening in the sun. You had a steel ladder that was literally a 90° angle from the ground and went 3 stories straight up. When you got to the top, there was a landing about the size of one child, protected on both sides by a single pole that looped upward so the kid could fall sideways if he wanted to, but no worries—there was always someone’s parents down below, holding their arms fruitlessly over their head. Then you would slide down on what was essentially a blech, and that was the last time you wore shorts to the playground.
And the slide was like an 80-degree angle from the ground, so you would go shooting off the bottom of the slide at 100 miles per hour, skidding along the ground for a bit before you came to a complete stop. Your parents couldn’t catch you, because they were off at the side with their arms over their head. You’d just mow down all the kids who were climbing up the slide backward.
Nowadays, we wonder how our parents used to be able to send us out of the house to play in the front yard without a care.
It was actually with some care. They were thinking, “At least he’s not at the park.”
Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at MSchmutter@gmail.com.
