Momma, I made it!

I was walking by a playground the other day and I notice how different it was from the playgrounds of my childhood. There was a slab of rubber covering the entire playground. Every piece of equipment was made of molded plastic and had rubber bumpers covering sharp edges. I want to give you a tour of my childhood playground at my elementary school back in the eighties. As you walk into the playground, which is surrounded by ten foot chain link fences with a couple of holes in it (it's supposed to keep out the guy in the white van), you see three slides, a set of swings and a set of Seesaws. The first piece of equipment you see is the tall slide, it was the giant slide that all the brave kids would climb up to prove that they had balls. The slides back then had a completely vertical ladder full of slippery bars as rungs (when it rain, you'd slip and bust your chin on one of the rungs) that led to a slab of metal that was the slide. Now imagine a reflective piece of metal on a hot summer day and a bunch of kids wearing shorts. The greatest test of balls, was standing on top of the tall slide without holding on to anything. The slide I saw at the new playground was made of plastic and had rails to keep you inside of the slide. Underneath the exit ramp of the slide was a slab of rubber, unlike my old slide where there was a slab of concrete as you exited. The next apparatus was the swings, a metal contraption with metal seats hanging from it. You would get on the metal bench and your friend would push you as hard as they can and you would try to touch the sky. The brave souls would try to touch the sky while standing on the bench, then the idiot friend would dare you to jump from the bench to the solid concrete below from as high as you can. The swings I saw the other day were the same metal contraption, instead they had what they call safety seats. Safety seats are molded plastic with straps to keep the child in the seat. Under the swing was that same slab of rubber made from old tires. The swings even had locks on them to keep them from swinging to high, there is no more touching the sky. The next playground set was the Seesaws or Teeter Totter, a metal bar with metal benches hanging off of it. Back in my youth, everything was metal and nothing was wrapped with rubber for protection (that's how most of us got here). You would never walk too close to the Seesaw, because a dickhead kid would try to smack you with the seat part of the Seesaw. You would never make fun of the fat kid on the other end of the Seesaw or you would be in the air for the entire recess. But if you had the balls, you would stand up on the Seesaw, while your friends hold the other side down. They would let go and hopefully you would jump off in time not to get hit with the seat. Or the asshole kid would jump off while you were in the air and you would slam to the ground and hurt the family jewels. The Seesaw in today's playground was made of molded plastic or wood and it had safety features. It had a slow lowering mechanism to keep the family jewels safe from that asshole kid. It had locks to keep it from going too high. They even had a Seesaw that you could play on by yourself (what happened to leaving the kid with cooties to stand at the fence doing nothing). This is just part of the pussification of America's youth. My friend told me that the parents at his cousin's school protested against Dodge ball, because it was too dangerous. Dodge ball teaches children about the real world, and that if you don't move or work hard, the asshole boss or president will knock you the hell out with his ball, signifying rules or something. Then I was looking at toys and realized, every generation becomes more pussified than the last generation. The kids before me played with Lawn Darts, Big Wheels and Pet Rocks. During my youth we played with Slip And Slides, Power Wheels and Tonka trucks. The kids in these days play video games, Just think what the kids in the future will be playing with. In the future there may be no interaction between children, no crazy stunts, no overly masculine actions and no shows of machismo. It kind of reminds me of my boy Al's blog entry. Let's stop the pussification of America's youth. Buy a young boy a porno magazine, take a kid to a strip club for his eighteenth birthday, stop the pussification.

Peace, I mean WAR!