A red flag meant basketball, 3 on 2, in the gym. A yellow flag meant outside, in the elliptical parking lot - it meant skinned knees. If a green flag was hanging outside of the office, recess was outside, on the playground.
The playground was small; in retrospect, I can't believe how easily we entertained ourselves with so few options.
There was a merry-go-round. I spent one spring on my stomach, spinning around, searching for and finding small, smooth, black rocks among the sand. I took them home and put them in small boxes.
There was a teeter-totter. No one ever called it a seesaw. I called it painful. Recess was over and it was time to assemble. I ran past the teeter-totter, toward the school's entrance, as one of a pair of teeter-totterers exited the contraption. The resulting upward force to my chin knocked me on my back.
There was a small set of swings that held up to four students. I remember Chris telling me about an episode of Quantum Leap while on the small swings - something about the days of slavery and a song that went "Boot to the head / na na / boot to the head / na na". Clayton showed me the new DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince tape on the small swings.
There was a cube of monkeybars. There was open space for kicking rubber balls and miscellaneous frolicking. There was a basketball goal with a dirt court. There was no slide.
As I advance through the grades, the playground expanded. First, more swings. Next, more monkeybars - these were dome-shaped, and no one ever used them to crawl under, monkey-like (or commando-like). Instead, the boys stood beneath the dome and looked up girl's skirts, or sat atop the dome and looked south, toward the new swings. The girls were there, swinging toward the north, skirts flapping.
Then, finally, mercifully, came the tornado slide. The boys abandoned their natural urges to focus on childish horseplay - the slide itself was kind of fun, but its simplicity bored us. We created a game that might have been called "Clog It", in which Keith and Matt, the two biggest kids in my class, eased themselves halfway down the slide and held their position. One by one, the other males would launch themselves down the slide in an attempt to dislodge them. Clog It was awesome but short-lived - the adults put a stop to it, and soon we were back to the same old crap.
(Also, the domain name was available.)
2 comments:
My favorite playground moment was when a kid named Aaron got his finger stuck in one of the holes on platform at the top of the slide. No amount of soap, butter, etc. could help dislodge the now swollen finger. They had to call the fire department and literally saw the metal plate apart to free the trapped finger.
Aaron transferred the next year.
It was a chilly fall day when Mrs. Metzen blew her silver whistle for the kindergarten class of '87-'88 to assemble in a line behind St. Elizabeth's school. This was where the playground was located. Two swing-sets, monkey bars, a slide, two tire swing-sets, two balance beams (one which was low to the ground and thin, and a second one about 4 inches wide, but more like 3 feet high off the ground.) Being in a devious mood, I decided to give Trent Smith one more hefty push on the tire swings located on the east side of the playground so he wouldn't be able to get off of them and get in line. I then ran towards the west and watched Trent in a stranded, circular disarray. When I turned my head to determine my destination (Mrs. Metzen's line) I ran right into the balance beam, which knocked me on my ass. "Hurry up, Gavin, get in line!" She yelled in my direction. It was at this point when Mrs. Metzen got a better look and started a dead sprint towards me, I'm guessing a 4 second 40-yard dash. She then picked me up and carried me into the school, where I remember passing Jana Horsch staring out of the 1st grade classroom wondering what happened. The next two hours are a little sketchy, but I do remember being on nitrous oxide and Dr. Scheer, my dentist, if I was on the moon yet. At this time, he went into surgery to remove one tooth, and the roots/shrapnel from my two front teeth at the time.
See, what happened was that I was about 3'6" at the time. The end of the balance beam was right at mouth level when I was running, and the posed a problem because I wasn't looking where I was going. Anyways, the plus factors of the incident were that I got to drink chocolate shakes in the afternoon for like 2 weeks, and I was the only kid (probably ever) to have braces in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades.
+Gavin
Post a Comment