Our school playground didn’t have a rubber ground. Or mulch. Or wood chips. No. We had gravel. Like little rocks gravel. And a swing set. A big one. Recess for us was jumping as far as we could into gravel.
We also had wooden monkey bars that gave you splinters. We tried to skip bars, and if we were lucky, land on the gravel. If we weren’t lucky, we would fall into a hornet’s nest. Hornets loved those old wooden playgrounds.
But perhaps the greatest piece of school yard entertainment was the steel merry go round. We’d have one of us try to hang off of it horizontally with 3 or 4 of us sping it. Lose your grip and fall off? Where would you land? You guessed it. Face first into the gravel.
That thing would get hot enough in the summer to fry an egg, but as much as we enjoyed eating our breakfast that way, we lost it before the end of 8th grade. A kid from a neighboring school crawled under theirs and tried to grab the axel while it was turning. It ripped his hand clean off. But still, those were the days.
Didn’t rip my hand off, but I definitely fell off one of those things, busted the back of my head open. I kind of… Fell backwards with my legs wrapped around the saddle, and hit the bottom edge with my head.
Split open like a mouth.
Rushed to the hospital. 23 stitches and 13 staples to close it up again. I have to have my hair cut a special way to hide the scar. People are always surprised when I show them.
I still rode those things afterwards. Kids were tougher back then lol, had to be 🤷♂️
Similar story. I was in elementary school and fell off the monkeybars and landed flat on my back and knocked myself out, surrounded by kids. I woke up later and everyone was gone, so I got up and went back to class. I got detention for being late. When my parents asked why I “skipped class” I said that I didn’t know and was grounded for not telling the truth.
I did other dumb things, mostly around bodies of water (cliff diving, rip currents). I’m surprised that I’m not dead. As an adult, I’m afraid of everything.
I never grew up around waves, so when my brother and I visited family on the coast and we were playing in the waves, other people wouldn’t join us. We were going further and further out. Finally we convinced the guy to join us, and no lie, he said he jokingly said “ok I guess I’ll die too”. We didn’t know what he meant. All three of us got stuck in a mild rip current. I almost drowned trying to swim directly into it. Nobody told me any different. My brother and the other guy were stronger swimmers, they were ok. It all happened very fast. We gave that guy an earful afterwards, he was like “I thought you knew” 🤦♂️
Our school playground didn’t have a rubber ground. Or mulch. Or wood chips. No. We had gravel. Like little rocks gravel. And a swing set. A big one. Recess for us was jumping as far as we could into gravel.
We also had wooden monkey bars that gave you splinters. We tried to skip bars, and if we were lucky, land on the gravel. If we weren’t lucky, we would fall into a hornet’s nest. Hornets loved those old wooden playgrounds.
But perhaps the greatest piece of school yard entertainment was the steel merry go round. We’d have one of us try to hang off of it horizontally with 3 or 4 of us sping it. Lose your grip and fall off? Where would you land? You guessed it. Face first into the gravel.
That thing would get hot enough in the summer to fry an egg, but as much as we enjoyed eating our breakfast that way, we lost it before the end of 8th grade. A kid from a neighboring school crawled under theirs and tried to grab the axel while it was turning. It ripped his hand clean off. But still, those were the days.
Didn’t rip my hand off, but I definitely fell off one of those things, busted the back of my head open. I kind of… Fell backwards with my legs wrapped around the saddle, and hit the bottom edge with my head.
Split open like a mouth.
Rushed to the hospital. 23 stitches and 13 staples to close it up again. I have to have my hair cut a special way to hide the scar. People are always surprised when I show them.
I still rode those things afterwards. Kids were tougher back then lol, had to be 🤷♂️
Similar story. I was in elementary school and fell off the monkeybars and landed flat on my back and knocked myself out, surrounded by kids. I woke up later and everyone was gone, so I got up and went back to class. I got detention for being late. When my parents asked why I “skipped class” I said that I didn’t know and was grounded for not telling the truth.
I did other dumb things, mostly around bodies of water (cliff diving, rip currents). I’m surprised that I’m not dead. As an adult, I’m afraid of everything.
Yikes, kids are dumb lol.
I never grew up around waves, so when my brother and I visited family on the coast and we were playing in the waves, other people wouldn’t join us. We were going further and further out. Finally we convinced the guy to join us, and no lie, he said he jokingly said “ok I guess I’ll die too”. We didn’t know what he meant. All three of us got stuck in a mild rip current. I almost drowned trying to swim directly into it. Nobody told me any different. My brother and the other guy were stronger swimmers, they were ok. It all happened very fast. We gave that guy an earful afterwards, he was like “I thought you knew” 🤦♂️