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When some people look at a playground, they do not feel any stirrings in their heart. I have to feel sorry for these people. How barren their childhood must have been if they feel no warmth for a commercial playground. Whenever I see playground equipment I feel a cinder of the flame I felt as a child. Any day that my mom told my brothers and I that we were going to park was a good day. We would have hours of hard-played fun as we scrambled over, under, and through every part of the playground. The playground went from being a spaceship, to an airplane, to a pirate ship, to a foreign planet, to a jungle tree house and on and on. It was the perfect foundation for our imaginations, and it was the perfect forge to shape bonds that have lasted a lifetime. A practical person might look at a commercial playground and see nothing more than metal shapes. They might see numbers: costs, hours of labor, hours for maintenance, calculations of risk and reliability. How cold and dull their world must be. When I look at a playground, I can still see a glimmer of the joy it holds for children. May that glimmer stay with me always. It reminds me that for a child, pure joy is easy to find. For them, fun is not a seldom fulfilled quest, it is trip to the park. I know; I have children of my own. Although I am too old now to romp around on the playground, I can still feel the joy of the playground vicariously through my children. It is this vicarious experience that keeps me young and keeps me in touch with my children. The only challenge of going to a park with kids is having children of different ages. While my youngest sees only slides when he looks at commercial playground equipment, my oldest wants to be a daredevil. In between is my daughter, who loves nothing more than the monkey bars. Between the three of them, they keep me busy. I run from slide to monkey bars then to catch my oldest son before he injures himself by jumping from a new height. It wears me out. Forget about taking my children to the park to burn off excess energy so that they'll sleep soundly at night. At the end of the day, I am the one who looks forward to bedtime the most. When I was younger, playing on the playground equipment didn't used to be so much work. The only thing better than a commercial playground is a bigger commercial playground. As far as I am concerned, you can never have enough play options for children. They flit around like butterflies in a flower garden from one piece of equipment to the next. Part of their joy comes from satisfying their curiosity. They might eventually settle on a favorite slide or swing, but they first have to roam over every inch of the playground. This quest for new experiences is richly fulfilled on a big playground. I don't know if I can ever say enough in favor of commercial playground equipment. While they might not be essential to sustain life, commercial playgrounds are an essential component of childhood life. Public parks are an important element of community building. If you could number the friendships that have been forged and the bonds that have been strengthened on a playground, you could see how essential they are to community health. I don't know if it is the inner child in me, but I still love commercial playgrounds and hope they will always be a part of my life.
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