The town playground

Cavan is obsessed with the playground! Her favorite is the slide—not only the downward whoosh, but she loves the climb up the steps and/or ladder to get to the top! And she is also learning to love the swings. Luckily, she gets two, half-hour sessions of playground time every day at school. And since we have had a couple of randomly summer-like days so far this year, I have treated her with trips to the town park.

Before I get into the experience at the town park, you have to understand a little bit about my town. We are about a hour and a half outside of NYC, so our town is made up of a lot of wonderful, down-to-earth people. I love where I live and love our neighbors, but unfortunately there is a significant population of delinquents. The kind that drive 90-miles an hour down our street just to get a little bit of air over the top of the hill. The kind that smash beer bottles on the pavement just for kicks. The kind that leave used used condoms and even more disgusting, used tampons on the beach at our lake. But more on how this relates to the playground in a minute. Back to our town.

Wait, there is no "town." It is relatively rural and is equipped with residences, but without any real town center or gathering place. No real shops, other than the liquor store. No real restaurants, except Panda Garden chinese takeout and the deli. Our town hot-spots include the post office, the library, and Darcy's Dance studio. There are no sidewalks in our town. No bike paths. But we do have a town park. And Cavan is now the perfect age to take advantage of this.

So a couple weeks ago, on a beautiful 68-degree day, Cavan and I go to the park after school. The playground equipment is awesome and new. But since it was the first warm day of the season, it was packed. My initial thought is great, Cavan will have other kids she can run around with. But after about five minutes, I was longing for one of those huge, cedar home playsets.

I am a new mom to the playground scene, but as a responsible parent, I assumed there would be some innate playground ettiquitte followed by all kids and moms. While some parents were actively watching their children—mostly the parents of children under five—most of the parents were either absent or off in the corner smoking. (Gross, seriously, smoking. At a playground. Get the patch people and respect my lungs.) These parents seemed to belong to the 15 or so delinquent seven to nine-year-olds that were running around, cursing like sailors (or I assume, their well-educated parents), and firing ping-pong-sized rubber balls at each other with some sort of pump-action toy gun.

Other than the obvious, I had some serious issues with this.

1) There is a fenced in area with the playground equipment, but their are multiple "open spaces," either sports fields, courts or just plain old grass, that these renegade boys could abuse. Why did they have to verbally and physically assault each other—along with all the other innocent kids—in the playground?

2) There seemed to be some other nice families there trying to enjoy the afternoon with their own children. Why didn't any of them say anything to these (insert expletive here) children and parents? (Why didn't you, you're probably thinking. Well, the teacher in me couldn't help myself so I cornered the pack-leader and told him to "watch his mouth young man." To which he promptly responded "whatever." This kid will probably find out who I am and where I live and with the assistance of his father, come to egg my house.)

3) Not only were these kids beaning each other with rubber bullets, they were tagging innocent kids as well (they had such great aim). Every time I ball came in my general direction, wanted to hurl it outside the fence. But here's why I did not. Since these kids were produced by cream-of-the-crop genes, I had no desire to argue sense with the obese, nicotine-fiend (and god knows what else) ignoramus that would probably try to assault me (and then burn down my house) for disturbing his kids' game.

So Cavan and I left (after successfully avoiding any flying-object injuries). And Hubby and I promptly decided to invest in our personal giant playset.

We've been discussing it for weeks but on the way home last night, we just happened to pass the grand opening of Eastern Jungle Gyms. It was a Cavan wonderland! Twenty different playsets of multiple sizes and accessories set up and ready for the test drive! Cavan never wanted to leave! The twenty-foot tall slide was her favorite, but that came on the $6000 set, so, sorry baby, we're not getting that one. But we did walk out having purchased the "Dream" set. It includes a slide, a rock wall, a jacob's ladder, a picnic table, a look-out tower and pirate's wheel, two sling swings, a double horse swing, a gymnastics hanging bar, and a climbing ramp. And it will be delivered and installed for free, thanks to the grand opening sale, on May 2! Unfortunately, Cavan doesn't quite get the idea of "ordering" something, and she cried all the way home because we didn't bring the swing set with us!

This was a bit of an extravagant purchase for us, but she and baby will get years of fun out of it. And the neighbor kids too. (Mary, Caden, Makayla, Brandon, and Sawyer, come over any time!) Thank God for great neighbors—we'll have our playground fun right here in the comfort of my backyard and leave the hoodlums to destroy themselves.

This is our set, minus the monkey bars, and with a bit of a
different configuration of the accessories.