I was thinking recently about playgrounds when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. Modern playgrounds look like they were designed by attorneys. The playgrounds of my childhood looked like they were designed by people who lost a bet. Back then, playground equipment wasn’t necessarily built to be safe. It was built to be fun.
Safety was apparently considered a personal responsibility. Take the giant metal slides, for example. In the spring and fall, they were fantastic. In the middle of summer, however, they became solar-powered skin removal devices. Every kid learned the same lesson eventually. If you sat directly on the slide in July while wearing shorts, you were about to discover temperatures previously known only to astronauts re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
The solution, of course, was to throw dirt down the slide first. I don’t know why it worked. I don’t know if it actually worked. But there was no more sticking to the slide… dirt became silicone… and then we launched ourselves down the slide at approximately 70 miles per hour with complete confidence in the scientific properties of playground dirt.
Then there was the teeter-totter. Officially, it was designed for two children to enjoy a gentle up-and-down motion. Unofficially, it was designed to determine which kid could bounce his friend hard enough to produce what we called “cherry bumps.” If your friend wasn’t paying attention, you waited until he reached maximum altitude and then stepped off. The resulting impact could be heard several counties away.
Friendships somehow survived this. At least most of them.
The merry-go-round was even better. Or worse. Depending on whether you were riding it or standing outside spinning it. The goal was simple. Spin it as fast as humanly possible and see who could hold on. This activity frequently ended with someone being launched into the dirt while the rest of us laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. Looking back, I’m honestly surprised none of us achieved orbit.
Then came the monkey bars. Today’s playgrounds often have soft rubber surfaces underneath them. Our monkey bars were positioned over dirt that had all the cushioning properties of a parking lot. The challenge wasn’t crossing the monkey bars. The challenge was crossing them after your hands got sweaty. Gravity always won eventually. And then there were the games that didn’t even happen on the playground.
We rode bikes without helmets. We drank from garden hoses. We climbed trees that would give modern parents heart palpitations. We built ramps out of whatever scrap wood we could find and convinced ourselves that a twenty-foot jump was a perfectly reasonable idea. Looking back, it’s amazing any of us made it to adulthood with all the original parts still attached.
Lawn darts. Actual lawn darts. For those too young to remember, lawn darts were essentially metal spikes that people threw into the air and hoped landed somewhere useful. At some point, an entire generation of adults looked at these things and collectively agreed: “Yes, let’s give these to children.”
We also played horseshoes with real metal horseshoes. Not foam. Not plastic. Metal. The kind capable of causing permanent life lessons. And somehow this was considered normal recreational activity. The funny thing is that every school seemed to have at least one kid wearing a cast. Every neighborhood had a kid with stitches. Every summer there was someone on crutches. Every recess produced a scraped knee, bloody elbow, bruised shin, swollen lip, or some combination of all four.
At the time, none of it seemed unusual. It was just childhood. You got hurt. You cried. You got a Band-Aid. You went back outside.
Looking back, I don’t think what we miss is the injuries. Nobody is nostalgic for a broken arm. Nobody fondly remembers the pain of skinning both knees on gravel. What many of us miss is the freedom. We were trusted to explore. To climb. To jump. To fail. To test limits. To make mistakes. And occasionally to discover that our latest idea wasn’t nearly as brilliant as we thought it was.
The playground taught lessons long before we understood them. It taught us courage. It taught us consequences. It taught us risk. It taught us resilience. It even taught us responsibility and accountability.
When the merry-go-round threw us off, we got back on. When we fell from the monkey bars, we climbed again. When the bike jump failed spectacularly, we rebuilt the ramp and tried a different angle. We didn’t learn resilience from books. We learned it one scraped knee at a time.
I’m not suggesting we bring back playground equipment that doubles as emergency room recruitment, and some improvements are probably a good thing. But I do wonder if we’ve lost something along the way. Not danger. Not injuries. Freedom. The freedom to fall down and get back up. The freedom to discover consequences firsthand. The freedom to learn that failure usually isn’t fatal. And the freedom to grow as individuals.
Because if there’s one thing Gen X learned on those playgrounds, it’s that most of life’s lessons happen after you hit the ground. And if you survived the playgrounds of the 1970s and 1980s, congratulations. You have already passed a risk assessment that would never be approved today.
Mostly.
Troy P Zehnder 