Ooops. For years the EPA recommended using ground-up rubber tires at playgrounds so our vulnerable kiddies wouldn’t get boo-boos when they fell.
Now the feds are admitting that “chronic, repeated exposure” to the icky chemicals and substances in tire pieces could present health problems.
This is a case of too much progress.
Old-fashioned dirt or grass was good enough. Jeez, if you wanted to fancy up a playground, dump some gravel for a surface.
But of course the modern goal was to make playgrounds safe and non-threatening. So the experts and consultants started putting in rubber floors and taking out “risky” equipment like see-saws and slides.
Slowly, playgrounds became less "dangerous." And more boring.
In some highly litigious places, I’m not even sure if kids are allowed to have fun anymore.
And if they do, I think they must have a recreational counselor on hand to ensure that they don’t commit cultural imperialism or engage in non-inclusive hierarchical patterns.
What a shame. We have destroyed the playground in order to save it.
Friday, June 05, 2009
OK kids, have fun*
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8 comments:
NOW I understand why my daughter grew a second nose during kindergarten. Whew! I'm glad that's been explained.
I don't got no kids but can i sue somebody anyhow?
The true cowardly thing done to playgrounds was removing the swimming pools and replacing them with sprinklers. What a wussy thing to do! when and how are kids going to learn to swim? In the back yard inflatable? In the bath tub? In Village creek or the Neches River? Are we gonna raise more generations of kids who sit in front of the tv or computer all the livelong day?
Are parents going to spend their summers watching their kids do nothing but eat a weeks' worth of groceries in a couple hours while emailing and texting and facebooking and all the other sit- on- your- butt "activities"?
I'd be willing to bet there aren't four kids under 18 in Beaumont who could climb a tree, swim in water over waist deep or do cartwheels. What a waste .
Go, Anne! Ooooh-RAH!
Hey, Anne and Mack, ain't you sittin' in front of th' computer yourselfs?
--Sven the Viking in Hardin County
Anne and I are permitted to sit in front of computers; we know how to spell reflexive pronouns.
Yes sven, I am sitting in front of my computer. I went to the Y this morning and swam for two hours. Also, I had an adventurous youth and leaned to swim in Village Creek, and can paddle a canoe, swim in a strong current, was a life guard as a teenager, ran track in school and rode horses up till the month i retired. Learning to climb a tree or a scaffold or up on a bareback hose or mule is another life skill I picked up.
I'm old and pretty crippled now, but in a pinch I could probably drag you out of the water and do CPR.
I'm not even going to go into all the power tools and building skills I picked up along the way. And I'm betting more than a few people who comment here are equally skilled at things other than sitting in front of the computer.inionsc
I went to Janice's Cafe' this morning and had a good ol' breakfast sodden with cholesterol -- does lifting that fork count as exercise? :)
I left the tires outside.
Life is good.
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