The Reason For Today’s Playground Surfacing
Now, I'm not trying to take credit for something I don’t deserve, but I’m pretty sure my friends and I are at least partially responsible for today’s playground surfacing.
Playground surfacing has come a long way since the days I was in grade school.
Those were the days of asphalt covering every square inch of ground under the swing sets, slides, and monkey bars. Sometimes it was grass, but that was mostly in playgrounds in the park. At the two grade schools I attended, the surfacing was most definitely asphalt, and it had that rough surface where the tiny rocks stuck out on top. Smooth it was not.
In fact, interestingly enough was the fact we were forbidden by school rules to play on the grass at school.
But we did have this massive area to play on behind the school—all covered in asphalt and in a couple of small spots, some weird sort of sand/gravel/dirt mixture. But back to my claim of being the reason (“cause” is probably a better word here) for today’s relatively plush playground surfacing.
Picture this. Besides the monkey bars, my favorite playground feature was the swings. You know the kind—those older ones with the frame made of galvanized pipe that stretched about four stories (or so it seemed) into the sky with the seat made of a piece of hard, but somewhat pliable rubber stretched between two chains that were long enough to anchor a cargo ship to dock.
Those swings were awesome because you could swing really, really high. High enough that the chain would slack sometimes and you would free fall a little ways before they stretched all the way out again. Remember that jerk when the chains did straighten out? High enough that you would swear the altitude was going to give you a nose bleed (okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, too). High enough that we could run underneath whoever was swinging at the time and not have to duck.
You could really go high.
And right at the apex of the swing, what did I do? You guessed it, I jumped. Right on to the asphalt. You had to do a barrel roll when you hit the ground or you would have broken your legs. A barrel roll right on that prickly asphalt that could rip the hide off an elephant.
I wasn’t the only one doing it. So were my friends. We used to have competitions to see who could swing the highest and then jump the farthest. I have to admit it was awesome, even if we had to endure the asphalt. I guess there’s no such thing as an asphalt burn (you know, like a carpet burn). It’s probably more accurate to say an asphalt scrape- your-hide-off-about-seven-layers.
I guess I was fortunate to never have broken any bones or done any serious damage to myself. And I didn’t know any of my friends who did either. So we managed okay and came through not-so-relatively-unscathed. But we did make it out of our childhood.
From everything I’ve seen these days, asphalt surfacing is pretty much a thing of the past. So you can see why I am willing to accept a little credit for the creation of today’s playground surfacing.
And that’s a good thing, because there’s no way I would let my kids do anything like what I did—especially on asphalt.
