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-Short Attention Span Theater-
New York Parents Say Hot Playgrounds Burning Kids
2008-07-22
Parents in New York City said their children are getting their feet burned while playing on blistering hot playgrounds.
When I was a child my mother used to send (not take) me to the playground. This was at the elementary school, several blocks from our house. There the miniature me could play the day away.
  • There was a kid-powered merry-go-round that could be made to turn at dizzying speeds, teaching us all sorts of lessons about cetripetal and centrifugal force. Much childish amusement was to be had when somebody tossed his/her/its centripetal cookies after a good centrifugal spin. Or maybe it was vice versa. If you fell, you landed on asphalt, often skidding. It was good for you. Eventually the scar tissue built up and your knees became impervious to injury.

  • We had a set of steel monkey bars where we could climb perilously high, to stand up on the top rungs and hoot at the world, then hang upside down by the knees, prior to falling on our heads onto the hot asphalt. I sometimes think that experience, not drugs, is why the 60s happened.

  • We had swings, too. Good ones, real wood hung on good, thick chains, from tubular steel frames set in concrete. They were indestructible swings. You could swing just as high as it was possible for your kicking little legs to take you and then, after several good swings, at the very apex of the hilarity, you could leave that wooden swing seat and sail through the air. If you were lucky you'd land on the grass covering the hard-baked July soil. If not, you hit the asphalt and your swing stood a good chance of conking you in the back of the head. That sort of thing probably explains disco.

  • Perhaps most excruciating was the sliding board, a good 7- or 8-foot length length of polished steel that on a typical late July day could fry an egg before it made it all the way out of the shell. Many was the childish bottom, my own among them, that sauteed on that relatively short trip down the slide. By the time I got home from a day on the sliding board my Mom could use my butt to make gravy.
Now I look at my grandchildren and think how much they'd have liked that playground, where kids played with an absolute minimum of adult supervision. Our parents never sued the township for a few bruises. And the childish versions of us had something today's kids seldom get.

Scabs.
The parents and their supporters said more than a dozen children are scorched each year by hot playground equipment, particularly by black mats under jungle gyms and sliding boards. They said the city is ignoring a public health and safety issue.
Poor widdle beppies. We used to laugh at the brats that blubbered after an itty-bitty fall from the top of a 7-foot jungle gym onto the asphalt.
Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said signs have been posted in playgrounds warning against going barefoot.
"Proper footgear must be worn at all times!"
He said his department was not going to remove the mats, calling the city's playgrounds "the safest in the world." Parks Department spokesman Jama Adams told the Daily News in Monday editions that there have been "no incidents reported" involving children being burned at playgrounds.
That tells me the kids are tougher than the grownups are.
Posted by:Fred

#35  Mine was a BB gun, 2 dogs, a "Rambo" knife and the woods in the Ozarks. All day on the weekends and usually after school. I'd be out after breakfast and be back for dinner. Sometimes my dad would give his loud whistle to call me home and I would whistle back that I was on my way. The chiggers ate me alive more then once. I lived too far out to have friends my own age, but I learn to hunt, track, shoot id poison ivy and build fires better then anyone of my future friends. My dogs were my bestfriends and the woods keep me out of trouble and happy. After a bad divorce I moved back to Missouri and have taken up float trips, camping and hiking with my dog again. I also met a wonderful woman who enjoys the same by chance on the trail. Sometimes you can go back home.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam   2008-07-22 22:50  

#34  I grew up in a rural area of central Louisiana. We'd go skinny-dipping in the local creek, and always had to post someone as snake and alligator lookout. We rode our bikes through the woods as fast as we could get them going. We built straw forts, had slingshot and chinaberry gun fights, and learned to throw an axe and crack a bullwhip. We'd sometimes get hurt, but no one ever died, even from scorpion stings, wasp stings, and the occasional fire ant nest. Too many of today's children aren't allowed to get dirty, and have virtually NO immunity from the rough, harsh, and sometimes deadly world they live in.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2008-07-22 20:16  

#33  Me and my 5 brothers used to run around the house with sharp sticks playing 'guns' as we would shoot each other (bang bang!). That and sliding down a grass enbankment with a cardboard sled directly onto a street. Or riding our bikes down the middle of a busy street - right along the centerline with cars going past both ways on the way down to san sayers pits in Lake Washington (where the hydroplane races were held) where we would jump of the docks into the lake (with no lifeguard).

Ah... youth....
Posted by: CrazyFool   2008-07-22 19:18  

#32  Oh, and if anyone had seen what we did with our toboggans or why we lugged 5-gallon buckets of water a half mile or more out to the top of a hill in the dead of an Ohio winter we'd have gotten our butts tanned till the snow around us melted from the heat.

Posted by: FOTSGreg   2008-07-22 18:45  

#31  I got tossed off the top of one of those metal slides when I was a kid by another kid a year older than I was. I caught my breath, got up, and went right back up that slide.

That kid and I became best friends after that and we still get drunk together whenever I'm back in Ohio.

Nowadays that kid would've been suspended or expelled and I'd have been rushed to the hospital.
Posted by: FOTSGreg   2008-07-22 18:43  

#30  I almost forgot a few things. We didn't have snow in South Alabama so we would get a cardboard box and "sled" down a hill on pine neetles. You can't steer a cardboard box. Those things could go awfully fast. One time we went frog gigging but there were so many water moccasins we quit trying to gig frogs and started gigging moccasins.
Posted by: Deacon Blues   2008-07-22 18:03  

#29  I blame Dr. Seuss for the internets, scar tissue, discos, bad gravy, cold phone salesmen, yuppy perspective, thin scabs and drug addiction....

yep!

And today we gottem Gaul Dern overprotective mommies.. who don't know how important trying to fly from your own roof is... sheech..

**
Impressive inline Fred... a keeper.... ~:)
Posted by: Red Dawg   2008-07-22 17:23  

#28  This cmoplaint is just stage one, preparing for a class-action lawsuit or something. I can just smell it. "Did you're child incur any harm by playing, or being unable to play on the hot playground?"
Posted by: rjschwarz   2008-07-22 17:03  

#27  I had an alley to play in. Street hockey and running bases with the boys, climbing all over the playground equipment. Sand in my clothes? Ok, I was doing laundry by age 9.

I consider it a blessing that my kids have had a weed patch or small woods or something messy to play in, which was considered a no parent zone, except for special occasions when the kids let us see their scrap lumber forts.
Posted by: mom    2008-07-22 16:16  

#26  As long as I've been a parent, and I've encouraged it in all 3 of my kids, I've said: if kids' knees and shins aren't covered with bruises and scabs by the middle of summer, they're not having enough fun.
Posted by: xbalanke   2008-07-22 16:05  

#25  heh - for real, we had a long concrete driveway, and would set up hockey nets, have bikes pull kids on skateboards with street hockey sticks and pucks. Fun and games til Brent got a compound fractured arm.

Street hockey meets rollerball meets chariot races....Nurse Bloomberg would faint
Posted by: Frank G   2008-07-22 15:50  

#24  We use to swipe wooden survey stakes and steel trash can lids and whale on each in "sword fights", have BB gun wars, full contact bicycle races, etc. This generation is going to grow up to be all metro-sexuals.
Posted by: Cowboy is a compliment   2008-07-22 14:53  

#23  love the inline Fred!

Michigan summers were spent much the same way, including jumping off the M-89 Bridge at Yorkville into (only God knew how deep ) the river. Now there is a humungous chain link fence up across the entire structure, including land side approaches so the kids now adys can't do that.

no GFIs so you would find out what happened when a bobby pin was stuck in the outlet.

Lawn darts ( the game, not the airplane)
Lawn dart catching.


"Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said signs have been posted in playgrounds warning against going barefoot. "

No Shoes, No shirt, no swingset.


Posted by: underdog   2008-07-22 14:19  

#22  We took the chain guards and reflectors off our bikes, they look cooler that way. Had dirt clod wars, shot stuff with BB guns, played smear the queer, had GI Joe dolls, had a healthy love affair with Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, were actually afraid of the police, and relished the occasional nudie magazine we came across.
Things were much simpler back then, and it wasn't that long ago. I pity these kids, they'll be lucky if they all don't turn out to be browbeaten, metro-sexual, ADD patients.
Posted by: bigjim-ky   2008-07-22 13:45  

#21  Inevitable, more Gold's Gyms needed. The Obamamessiah will provide.
Posted by: AL Gore   2008-07-22 12:49  

#20  great comments!
Posted by: Percy Spumble4268   2008-07-22 12:49  

#19  Glitle Smith3124 was me. Something ate my cookie.
Posted by: Deacon Blues   2008-07-22 12:23  

#18  Fred, great inlines. Me too. Used to burn my ass on slides all the time. Now kids have water slides. We didn't and those suckers must have been at least 150 F. Same with jungle jims. So hot I had to drop off sometimes. I wish i knew how many times I fell off a merry-go-around. Damn we could get those spinning fast. Good memories. No wonder these kids are fat nowadays. Think about the calories we burned. Not to mention baseball, which we played almost daily. And, rode our bikes miles each day at the fastest speed possible. We had fun, entertained ourselves and burnt off fat. No wonder we could eat all the time. What a shame kids are not safe to play freely like we were. They sit in the house in front of a screen, like us oldtimers now. A great pity.
Posted by: Woozle Elmeter 2700   2008-07-22 11:57  

#17  If you could get a real gang of kids together, nothing beat a good game of Cowboys, Indians, Aliens, Nazis and Dinosaurs. That was some truly bad Saturday morning Sci-Fi theater, you betcha.

And then they opened up the quadruple feature Shaw Brothers Kung Fu cinema, and *really* rotted our brains. Sonny Chiba was a demigod.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2008-07-22 11:12  

#16  You know what I saw last friday. An 8 year old on a horse. A real horse, a tall horse. This guy was working cattle, real cattle. And he was good at it. Me, I didn't get much more advanced than BB gun tag.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2008-07-22 11:08  

#15  Folks, there is another creeping danger right underneath your kids' fingers. It is extremely dangerous even though there is a country wide ad campaign not just downplaying the danger but encouraging people and targeting kids in particular. It can be bought over the counter at any store in the nation. The threat: Chedder Cheese. Apparently this contriband is so dangerous it has even labeled 'Sharp' and 'Extra Sharp'. DO NOT let your kids put this menacing "Food Item" in their mouth or run carrying a block.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2008-07-22 11:06  

#14  We had to walk to school in the dread San Diego winters, uphill, both ways. We couldn't afford shoes, so, to get traction on the icy hill, we wrapped our bare feet with barb wire... and books? Lemme tell you...

WTF is wrong with people nowadays? Bloombergitis?
Posted by: Frank G   2008-07-22 10:22  

#13  Fishing, hunting (with real guns), pickup football, baseball, basketball, hockey, hard outdoor work (for real money); those were the ways I spent my time as a kid. Hell of a lot better than playing Nintendo. Taught me a lot about what was real and what wasn't. Contributed mightily to the process that insured I would NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES IMAGINABLE, be a liberal.
Posted by: Jomosing Bluetooth8431   2008-07-22 10:15  

#12  Nanny Bloomberg! I'm too stupid to make sure my kids wear shoes! Help me! Save my kids feet! Save me from myself!
Posted by: tu3031   2008-07-22 10:07  

#11  We didn't live on a farm, but had good friends that did.

Jumped from the barn rafters into the haymow, climbed the concrete silo (on the outside, using the steel rings that held the whole thing together), threw rotten eggs and cow-pies at each other, and generally appreciated being alive.

In town, my playground experiences were similar to Fred's with the hot, hard, heavy and absolutely excellent equipment. The wife and I try to explain the 'play stuffs' we used and the grandchildren look at us like we were suicidal fools.
Posted by: Mullah Richard   2008-07-22 09:59  

#10  Ah, come on people. This is deep blue country where newborns are becoming as rare as Northern Spotted Owls. Those that are able to escape the knife and suction that waited so many of their brethren even before they made it out of the womb, are nurtured in a sanctuary of artificial banality, created to insure that they at least some make physical adulthood in order to vote to keep the nanny state going. Therefore, the few, the vain, the cuddled are given every protection from the true nature of life. Heck, some day they may even run for President.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2008-07-22 09:26  

#9  I always thought Noo Yawker kids were tough. (That's what my Brooklyn-born daddy told me, anyway.) If their mommies can't handle a little bit of heat from a rubber mat, they'd probably go apoplectic from some of the "character building" I got as a kid (wiping out on blacktop with the pointy rocks sticking out.....during a Phoenix summer.....the good thing is it kinda started the cauterization process and sped up healing. ;) )

Oh....and we had a way to deal with saute-ing your butt on the way down the slide. We'd pour sand on it and slide on that. It did a number on your clothes, true, but it kept your butt from sticking and made it marginally less hot.
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields   2008-07-22 08:27  

#8  We at least you had dirt Glitle all we had were woven Sandspur turf, but we were damn glad to have even that.
Posted by: .5MT   2008-07-22 08:25  

#7  The phone company strung new wire and gave us kids either the old or some scrap, I don't know which. Seemed like a good substitute for rope so we hung an old tire from a tree limb with it. Great swing for a while. Then we discovered metal fatigue. Just added to the thrill - tied off the break and tried to guess how long until it broke again. Or until the knots failed. Learned a lot that way. That which does not kill me makes me stronger.
Posted by: Menhaden S   2008-07-22 08:21  

#6  In Spain we played cowboys and Indians when we weren't playing sheriffs and outlaws. I had a toy colt 45 (won it in the raffle of a circus) who was about as big and heavy like a rela one. I absolutely loved it.

I guess today kids are no longer allowed to play at those games. Instead they play soacial assiatsnt and drunkard or "global warming activists and bush-haliburtono-hitlerists"
Posted by: JFM   2008-07-22 08:04  

#5  Playgrounds? The only time I got to go to a playground was at school during recess. At least our school was too poor to have asphalt. We had dirt. We had pine cone wars, dirt clod wars, played army (Civil War) at school. Almost every boy had a pocket knife. We were expected to act like boys and we did. Wimps.
Posted by: Glitle Smith3124   2008-07-22 07:51  

#4  Hot playgrounds are hot.
Posted by: badanov   2008-07-22 07:08  

#3  For those of us that grew up in rural America, there were similar "death defying" activities.

My mom's order of the day was 'go outside and play'. Running through woods, fishing, catching frogs, playing baseball, riding bikes down to the river - all without parental supervision, something that would never occur today with all the supermommies who invent a million excuses why their little precious can't take any risks at all.

We got stung by bees, bitten by ticks and mosquitoes and various other biting insects, fell out of trees we climbed, etc.

Still here to talk about it.

There is a series of magazine ads showing kids wrapped in bubble wrap. Show this to one of today's yuppy overprotective olympic mommies, and they actually consider the idea. (I've experienced this more than once.)

These overprotective parents aren't feminizing our boys, they're doing something far worse - emasculating them.
Posted by: no mo uro   2008-07-22 06:02  

#2  You forgot the teeter-totters...large wooden beams where the game was to try and knock the top kid off by landing hard, or failing that by rolling off leaving him to plummet to the ground
Posted by: Oldcat   2008-07-22 02:08  

#1  Fred, I know exactly what you mean. I had much the same experience. My granddaughters live next door to a playground that is very nice - it has soft rubber mats, the various things are designed so that a kid would have to work hard to hurt himself.

By the way - worse than landing on asphalt was landing on loose gravel. That way, you ended up not only with scrapes, but an odd pebble or two or three embedded in your skin.
Posted by: Rambler in California   2008-07-22 01:08  

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