Resilience (and a second degree burn) from a Metal Slide

I don't typically spend a lot of time on playgrounds or in parks. Considering the fact that I have no children and I don't teach elementary school, this is a good thing. But as I approached my big move to New Orleans, I found myself becoming sentimental about my hometown.  Since I was living 2 blocks away from my elementary school, I started taking walks everyday to revisit the playground that helped socialize me. I don't know what I expected from those walks, maybe a more solid sense of what moving meant.  But for some reason I was definitely expecting the playground to look exactly like it did 20 years ago. I was disappointed when I realized just how different everything was. I'm not sure why I was so disappointed. I think it made me sad to realize that the kids that go to that school now are making entirely different playground memories than I did. And based on the new equipment I saw on the playground, those memories are going to be a lot less painful.

The first thing that I noticed missing was the giant yellow slide. It was the most prominent feature of the playground, especially since it was at least 15 feet high. You had to climb a set of wooden stairs that seemed to be designed to give you a splinter no matter what you were wearing or how you were walking.  The splinters were enormous and based on the way they stung, the wood was pressure treated with cyanide and anthrax.  Then you slid down the yellow slide was apparently coated in Crisco for ultimate sliding ability.  And then you landed hard in a pit of gravel.  If you didn't dig yourself out of the gravel within 3 seconds, you were going to get kicked in the back by a classmate. Pile ups were likely, and costly. I lost a couple baby teeth and a lot of pride to that slide.  Also, I got worms from digging in the gravel...twice.

I also noticed that the big red metal slide was missing too. This slide was made of steel, probably some debris left over from the Civil War, which means it could easily give you a concussion if you ran into it. Also, the surface of the slide would heat up to these molten temperatures in the warmer months, and it would give you 2nd degree burns as you slid down it. Your weight propelled you down the steep slide at top speeds, leaving the skin on the back of your legs behind. Since the slide was rusty, it was important to update your tetnus booster before taking a ride.

There was also an absence of swing sets on this new playground. Swingsets must be the archnemesis of all kindergarten teachers. They've watched for years while kids made up new and terrifying ways to endanger their lives with the simplest of machines. I remember some of the games we created with the swingset, because just swinging on them was lame. One person would sit in a swing while three others would twist the swing around, winding the chains up tight until your feet were six feet off the ground. And then they would give you one big twist in the opposite direction and run like hell so they didn't get kicked. If you fell off, lost a finger, or puked you lost. We would run The Gauntlet too, which wasn't one of my personal favorites. While your friends were swinging back and forth you had to run through the swings. The goal was to not get kicked, knocked out, or lose any teeth. I guess it makes sense why there weren't any swings on this new playground.

Everything just looked so much smaller and safer than the playground of my youth. Maybe it's just that my perspective has changed but since I'm same height now that I was in the fifth grade, I don't think that the playground fixtures would look much smaller to me than they did back then. I think this playground was just smaller...lower to the ground...and the ground was no longer covered in gravel. It was covered with these soft, bouncy rubber chips. (You'd actually have to try to skin your knees on this stuff). The monkey bars were about 5 feet off the ground, and if they were made of metal you would never know it because the metal had been covered with this green, rubbery concoction that would keep you from burning your hands or dying of lock jaw. If you fell off of these monkey bars, you landed just a few feet below in a soft pillow of rubber chips. And forget hanging upside down from these monkey bars. They were designed in a way that made that impossible.

I feel like our safer playgrounds are just another example of our refusal to let this generation fail at anything. We preemptively design things so they won't experience anything unpleasant like a skinned knee, or a bump on the head. That same belief can be seen in other ways too. With No Child Left Behind we refused to leave kids behind in a grade even if they didn't have the skills. We wouldn't let them fail. With Upward Sports we allow our kids to play basketball games in a league where they don't keep score. We don't allow them to lose. With hand sanitizer we don't allow them to get germs in their system to even build up anti-bodies. Kids aren't allowed to jump into giant piles of leaves because of ticks.  Bobbing for apples is totally off limits for obvious reasons.  We do all of these things to protect the younger generation, but are we actually just making them weaker?  Are we helping to create the most non-resilient generation that this country has ever seen by protecting them too much? 

I'm not saying that we should start lacing our playgrounds with syringes and razor blades. But I am wondering if we are protecting and providing too much for our younger generation. When I get some of these students in my class who have grown up on hand sanitizer and Upward Bound, they have no sense of accountability. They don't believe in trying to become better at something because admitting you need to improve takes character.  Character develops when people are challenged.  Challenges allow children the opportunity to fail which in turn allows them the opportunity to learn.  Many kids today just want to be good at something immediately, and if you criticize them, you are the enemy. They don't always want to learn how to get better; they just want the trophy.  And why would they even try to get better if they will get a trophy for being below average?  Kids today want something soft to land on.  And when they land on something that isn't soft, their skin isn't always tough enough to allow them to get up, brush themselves off, and try again. 

Strangely, I take comfort in the fact that adults were saying the same things about my generation 20 years ago that I am saying today.  I turned out okay so far, and so did a lot of my friends.  I guess a good old fashioned and slightly crotchety "kids these days" rant means I am officially an adult.  Of course I thought my obsession with dental insurance and keeping track of my daily fiber intake was my official initiation.  Either way, as an ASU alumni, I can honestly say that when I was your age, I had to walk to school uphill both ways...in the snow.  And I'm better for it.