Notes from the Playground – A Slippery Slope

(Sharon continues her Notes from the Playground series)

I may have mentioned before how great we think the playground is at Wallingford Park. It’s cool that there are two play structures, side by side, so both toddlers and older ones can do their thing, but still mingle. I especially like how the blue squishy stuff underneath it makes me feel so safe, since my son, like most three year olds, has taken his share of tumbles there.

Tunnel slide by Mike Keran

Like the time when he was a year and a half, happily sharing the tire swing with his little buddy Wade. I got to chatting with the other mom as my son appeared to have a good grip on the chains. So I let my attention slip for maybe one, one millionth of a second, and BAM – he lands face down and eats dirt. Apparently, his baby grip was just for show and I didn’t have supermom reflexes after all. I was certain he was headed straight for the ER and was horrified that I was the one to blame. Luckily, a few minutes, many tears and several spits of bark later, he was fine and off running.

Another incident happened on my husband’s watch. Our son was just learning how to climb the ladder and had managed to reach the top by himself. In typical dad fashion, my husband was walking that fine line between helping him learn a new skill and prepping him for the X games. Suddenly, our then two year old fell backwards onto the ground from six, maybe seven, feet up. He bit it again, but this time, landed flat on his back. When I heard about it, my mind conjured up images of paralysis, but again, no real damage was done.

There are, however, a few small things that puzzle me about the design of the playground – the first being those various gaping holes on the highest level of the play structure where kids of all ages run wild and free. Now that our son is nearly four, they don’t faze me much but when he was younger I was constantly playing defense – hands up, knees bent, sliding side to side around the structure, trying to mirror his every move. I was practically “the Glove,” aka, Gary Payton, before he got old and went to LA. I thought it would only be a matter of time before a child just walked right off the edge with all the parents in a half mile radius running over in vain.

The other thing that gets me is the sandbox. It’s like an attractive nuisance of sorts and not  just limited to babies and toddlers. Frankly, even adults aren’t immune. Perhaps it’s gotten you too – you can’t escape it. It’s like a tractor beam that pulls you in unknowingly. And what makes it worse is that at first you “think” you’re safe because the squishy stuff beneath you provides a false sense of security. Wrong. Somehow, the squish, the sand and the slope become this lethal cocktail and before you know it, WHAM, you’ve wiped out.

And when I say “wipe-out,” I mean the full meal deal. I’ve seen little cherubs, cheeks ablazin’, squealing in delight as they waddle full speed to the digger, get knocked off their feet faster than you can say blowout. It’s almost worse with the pre-school set because they think they’ve mastered their gross motor skills so it takes a hit on their egos as well as their bottoms. Plus, there’s the added danger that they’ll somehow fall face forward, accidentally hitting their jaw against the metal base of the digger. My heart pounds faster every time I see a kid running near that thing.

The adult spill isn’t quite as epic but feels just as painful. The unexpectedness of it all makes you clench your muscles (which if you’re anything like me, are chronically in need of massage), so when your body compensates by quickly catching itself, you tweak some teeny tiny muscle you never knew existed (and probably haven’t used in a decade) in your lower back or inner thigh. Come to think of it, the same thing happens anywhere in the sandbox where the squishy floor slopes downward – like the entrance perhaps? I’ve seen so many people slip there. But the digger pit presents the biggest hazard since it alone wields sharp metal objects. Ironically, this area is designated for toddlers.

I think the Parks Department must have gotten some complaints, because for a while it seemed like they were trying to remedy the situation by dumping more and more sand around the digger. Unfortunately, the sand got redistributed, seemingly overnight, by a thousand pairs of little hands. I guess it is, after all, a sandbox. I don’t get over to the toddler area as much lately so perhaps it’s better now.