Hope For Our Children
May 19th, 2010
Bacon Betty and I surprised ourselves Saturday by going out and taking a walk. I know, shocking, right?
I found this great book while wandering through Powell’s a few weeks back. It is called “Walk There-50 Treks In and Around Portland and Vancouver”. It is a guidebook for walking tours of Portland’s neighborhoods. It is amazing how little of this city I have seen in my ten years here and now that I have a fantastic crime partner like Bacon Betty, it was high time I got out and saw some of what this city has to offer.
We decided to stick close to home for our first outing and explored Betty’s home town…Milwaukie.
Little did I know that besides being home to a geek Mecca, Dark Horse Comics, Milwaukie also offers something that I thought no longer existed in America.
Something that, for years, had shaped and molded our youth and then, like the Hula Hoop, disappeared from the American landscape.
I speak of course, of the Killer Play Structure.
Gaze with wonder upon this child killer we found in a Milwaukie Park.
Can’t you just see some little urchin reaching the top of this cabled peak, only to loose their balance and learn the amazing life lesson that getting to the top can mean a long painful fall to the bottom of the heap. Where else can our youth find life lessons like this?
On a wimp ass, politically correct, injury free playhouse like this one that we found in the more upscale portion of Milwaukie?
I think not.
Kudos to this fair city for having the strength of character to not cave into the national obsession of bubble wrapping kids and keeping them from harms way.
How else of we supposed to winnow out the weak and potentially useless members of society before they grow old enough to attain political office?
The Passion of the Playground. I love it. An era ended just after I became too cool (old) to play on playgrounds, and how lucky is that for a guy like me, who is maybe the youngest person alive to have survived as “king of the mountain” for an entire recess period. I stare in disbelief now at the newer structures, and not only because of what AJ pointed out in their wimpy stature, but mainly the extra addition so many of them have, TIC-TAC-TOE. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/68/211444025_6e8a66c681.jpg?v=0
Holy Shit, are you FUCKING KIDDING ME with the Tic-Tac-Toe?! Its a game (if you can even call it that) that can be played with great ease using a stick and an 8 inch patch of dirt. Or for people with a mortal fear of dirt you can cleanly fit about 50 games onto a single sheet of notebook paper. Of course this is all ignoring the fact that nobody wants to play tic-tac-toe, because its fucking stupid. Has anybody ever seen any kids playing the tic-tac-toe game on any of these playgrounds? Or better yet, can anybody even ENVISION any kids ever playing it? OF COURSE NOT! What kid is going to pass up tag, or kickball, or tease the stinky kid for tic-tac-toe? The only time any of those nine 8 inch blocks are ever even touched is when a 4 year old climbs up and starts bitch slapping them seeing how many he can get spinning around at once.
Now most of these games are all built on public grounds, (go figure) but I was out with my wife on a walk not too unlike yours AJ, and I saw a backyard play structure with tic-tac-toe. Amazing. I turned to my wife and exclaimed, “Wow honey, wouldn’t that be great, to have tic-tac-toe right in our own backyard! Think of it, anytime we got the hankering for another exciting round, we wouldn’t have to go all the way down to the public park, we’d just have to go a few short steps outside!” she agreed.
Comment by Happy Atheist — May 19, 2010 @ 6:15 pm