The old junglejims with their rubber jigsaw mats beneath to break your fall had given way to more conceptual installations. Large wooden structures with chain-link bridges, rope swings, tire obstacle courses now stood rooted in deep sand. Each playground was slightly different. Only one had the tire swing. Another had a fortress or a wall of climbing ropes.
The old corrugated-metal manually operated merry-go-rounds were still there. You’d run alongside, holding one of the metal tube handholds and jump aboard once you got it up to speed. Sometimes a kid’s older brother would get the whole thing spinning faster than our stubby legs could do on their own. Rarely did anyone fall off and even more rarely did someone throw up….
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(read the rest of Understand, Rubberband? at Fictionaut.)