Girl Child punchi-sized her face on the school playground yesterday by running around WITH HER EYES CLOSED WHILE MEOWING. Now her upper lip is about the size of a Jeep Wrangler tire, and she doesn’t want to eat solid foods. Good thing she had a dentist appointment this morning anyway.
I know it’s totally un-American these days, but instead of suing the school for not wrapping their playground equipment in three layers of foam and assigning a Safety and Impact Prevention Agent to follow my child around at all times, I advised her that running around on a playground with your eyes closed is not a good way to avoid getting smacked in the mouth by peacefully stationary metal objects. RADICAL, I KNOW.
Unless the bleeding cannot be stopped by ordinary measures (brushing off sand, applying paper towel with pressure, etc., put a Bandaid on it and suck it up, Cowboy. Only cupcakes cry…
Elizabeth
In Russia, ground plays YOU!
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist)
One of my early formative experiences came in the form of an unplanned parabolic ejection from one of our widdowmaker merry-go-rounds (like the one in the picture below, only higher)
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4138/4777109271_231db89463_z.jpg
Learned to Hold On Tighter Next Time!
😀
Things I learned on the playground. 1) gravity always wins. 2) The difference between centrifugal and centripital force (stuck on vs. flung off merry-go-round). 3) Differential heating of surfaces (rubber swing seat vs. shiny metal slide vs. wooden swing seat). 4) Dandelions taste bad. 5) Genealogy and family relations – because the little kid you shove off the slide just to get them down? Yeah, he’s got a big sister. She pushes hard. Note that none of this required the presence of lawyers or child safety advocates.
I see we played on the same playground.
I spent my formative years in a house equipped with with an oil fueled heater in the front room and a wood burning range in the kitchen. I do not remember every getting burned on either, and there were no kiddie guards either. The playground across the street had swings with wooden seats, a tall slide which would eject a kid about six feet beyond the bottom if he sat on a wax paper bread wrapper as we did, a teeter totter, a mechanically operated merry-go-round that could reach light speed with all six crank stations operating and a set of monkey bars that were legendary in height and complexity. I also have no memory of serious injury to anyone who ever played there. The odd split lip and broken arm notwithstanding.
Also in that time, 1950-’51 and place, Igloo, S.Dak. most boys were given a pocket knife, a clean handkerchief and a new cedar pencil the first day of first grade, there being no Kindergarten. I and most of my friends were given our first real rifle as a seventh birthday gift, usually .22 cal. single shots. My rifle was encumbred with hours of admonition in safety and judgement and came with a box of .22 longs. The first day of fishing season was a free day to any kid having perfect school attendance and at least a B average, along with a new cane pole and some basic tackle. I still have my pole and kit from Second Grade, the rifle long since passed to a younger cousin but still in the family.
Things have changed, much for the worse.
“Radical”? Hardly. It will be a lesson she will remember her whole life.
Like the time I leaned over the stove to smell the food cooking in the pot and got my nose a we bit to the hot metal. Age 5; now 63.
Yeah, I did a lot of stuff as a kid that I have no idea what the fuck I was doing, either.
Like riding around on a bicycle looking through the hole on a LP. Yes, the 1/4″ hole. Amazingly, it’s hard to see enough when your view is limited like that. I ran into a parked car. And then I decided to stop doing that.
heh. I’m sure Children’s Aid, or whatever those Nazi’s call themselves by you will be by shortly to remonstrate with you concerning you lack of empathy, poor parenting and general scrufulousness (there are even rumors that your a furriner by birth (which good) , even though you act like some shellback American believer in the Constitution (boo! hiss!) ) and will threaten you with removal of your children.
And as a non – sequitor:
Our rural motto of the day is: “Shoot, Shovel and Shut up”
I had similar thoughts when a nephew burned his fingers (very slightly) on a stick he pulled out of the campfire.
It was a simple lesson of “fire is hot” along with “don’t touch things that have been on fire, and hey maybe once something is in the fire, it should stay there”.
A few words and HE learned how to cope, no safety nazi required.