Favorite Playground Equipment

[taurusmoon]

Talk about sliding...

What was your favorite piece of playground equipment when you were a kid?

I grew tall very quickly so the trip down the slide became frustratingly brief.

I'd have to say my favorite is a toss-up between the swings and that wheel-like contraption that spun around when someone pushed off against it. It looked kinda like one of the playing pieces from Trivial Pursuit. Darn, what do they call that thing? The name escapes me.

A senior moment while recalling childhood. Rather poetic, huh?

[slick4591[$]]

Merry-Go-Round

[taurusmoon]

You know, I guess that is what we called it. Duh.

I always (incorrectly) think of a carousel as a merry-go-round. Now the carousel was my real favorite. But it doesn't exactly qualify as playground equipment, does it?

Which begs another question...

Carousel preferences:
Moving or stationary horse?
Or did you opt for the odd rooster, lion or zebra?
Flashy and ornate, or low key and realistic?

[lynnzop[$]]

I liked the box hockey game.

Swings were a close second, but I can't do swings anymore because they make me dizzy(er than normal ).

I wonder if I could get hubby to build me a box hockey......

[emeleel]

Box hockey?

Swings for me, I think.

[lynnzop[$]]

emeleel said

Box hockey?

Fancy that...I found one on epinions

The ones we had were large wooden boxes that you had to go through the holes in the partitions (three in all) to score a goal at the other end of the box. The challenger picked the shots you could take (you could only shoot the puck in a certain way, i.e., left-handed hook only, or back hand only) I preferred playing with your hands instead of sticks, but they banned it from our playground because too many kids got slivers.

I'll never forgive my brother for falling off the top of the slide (he was goofing around) right when I got to be the champ of box hockey. I had to forfeit my championship when Suzie H. came running around the corner screaming that he'd broken his arm and I had to take him home.

Fond memories.

[taurusmoon]

I have never, ever come across box hockey before. Might it be a regional thing?

Talk about regional things... anyone ever play Sculley?

[Grouch]

I don't know if I had a favorite piece of playground equipment, but I certainly have favorite stories to tell about certain contraptions.

I loved slides, but my fear of heights really contributed to my not going down them very often. That, and the way the sun baked the metal until it felt like a cookie sheet fresh from the oven as you slid down. ("Ow-ow-ow-OW-OW!! It burns! It burns!")

I liked swings.
Until the day I fell backwards off of one in mid-flight and cracked my skull on a rock which had been exposed in the scuffed-dirt area under the swing. Still, I loved going higher and higher on swings until, at the very highest point during the forward-flight momentum, I'd launch myself out of the seat and, for one brief, intoxicating moment...I'd FLY!

I liked merry-go-rounds...until the day I was pushing one faster and faster and, for some reason I still can't figure out (32 years later), I stopped to watch its progress, forgetting about the bars which stuck out. The metal hit the small of my back and I flipped up in the air and landed straight down underneath the spinning merry-go-round. The metal bars still whizzed at top speed directly above my head and I was saved from decaptitation only by the quick thinking of my brother who grabbed the bars and dug in his feet, braking the merry-go-round to a stop. Just think, if I'd lifted my head just an inch or two, I'd be able to go around these days saying, "Why, if I had half a brain, I'd...etc."

[anderclayton]

I liked the things that looked kinda like domes made of bars. I practiced until I could walk over the top of it (and still can last time I checked).

Ander

[anderclayton]

Ummmm... Maybe it is called a "two-way arch climber"

Kinda sorta looked it up but haven't found a picture...

Ander

[lynnzop[$]]

Ander, we just called them monkey bars. And the old kind, made out of metal, seem to be obsolete...I can't find a picture online anywhere either!

I reminded my brother tonite of the falling off the top of the slide incident. He remembered it well.

[slick4591[$]]

Or a jungle gym.

[lambchops]

I really liked the bars--they were basically horizontal bars at three different levels. I was much, much larger than the rest of the kids and could manage to do some pretty crazy tricks on them. I liked swinging around not using my hands and doing the death defying cherry drop (basically just hanging upside down and letting my legs go and always landing on my feet).

I also liked the merry go round, but I never got to ride. Again with the size, I was faster than everybody else which always translated to pushing.

[phoenixx[$]]

My favorites were the Merry Go Round, Tire Swings (the ones on the three chains that three kids could sit in) - things that made you or your friends dizzy and nauseus (added bonus points if you were the pusher and actually got your friend(s) so sick they fell off, similar bonus points if you were the rider and didnt fall off...)

Metal Swingsets that weren't anchored in were awesome - see who could go highest without tipping the whole set over

We also used the baby play stuff as weaponry as we got older - putting younger siblings or friends our age on the stupid horse and car things on one spring that the babies ride, then taking two other people and pulling the thing alllllllllllll the way back to the ground and launching said sibling or friend like a catapult projectile.

We always brought our Lawn Darts to the playground and used them in the sand box playing terror-olympics

Slides were only fun for playing tricks on the unobservant (wait at top of slide until your target appears below, then BLAMMO! you're both in the dirt.... or run UP the slide to freak out the person about to come down)

Monkey bars (straight across ones) and jungle gyms (the dome ones) were great for tricks, but often resulted in broken bones and cuts and bruises when we discovered we were NOT, in fact, Mary Lou Retton.... Although my friends Pete and Nicholas, twins, developed a truly amazing trick involving their BMX bikes, our skateboards, the jungle gym and plywood when we got older.....

My favorite playground thing now is still the merry go round, with swings a close second (not many have a tire swing anymore) - my friends and I go to the nearest playground at 4 AM after we've been out so we can play while no one is looking...

[anderclayton]

Nah... I found a pic of something that looks like half of the thing I am talking about (basically just parallel bars going up and down in an arch) and they refer to but don't have a picture of a "two-way" one which sounds like the one I am talking about

Monkey bars for us were always the bars set parallel, perpendicular to the ground and high enough so when you swung on them you couldn't touch the ground.

Jungle gyms were the ones that looked like boxes.

I am not really sure what the ones I am talking about were called. I can't ever remember calling it anything.

Honestly I can't really remember spending a whole lot of time on the equipment aside from that. I remember liking the stuff in concept but not really in execution. I mostly played soccer on recess, maybe a bit of tetherball, and four square possibly (mostly soccer).

I had a sandbox at home that I liked but mostly because the kids that had owned our house before had buried a whole ton of matchbox cars in it. We didn't have a sandbox at school and instead kids dug in the dirt in one corner of the field. It was kinda cooler than a sandbox though because it held its shape a bit better. Geeze though, feeling like one of those people with the stories of When I was a kid my parents didn't buy me a dog. Instead I tied a hot dog to a leash and drug it around... I loved that hot dog!



Ander

[lynnzop[$]]

We always brought our Lawn Darts to the playground and used them in the sand box playing terror-olympics

My brother SAYS that lawn darts (Jarts) are illegal to own.

We were playing with them on the side yard yesterday. They are a lot of fun, although they definitely require adult supervision.

[murasaki]

Do I really have to choose?

I like the merry-go-round. I like swings (though I was never the type to jump out of them). I like the jungle gym--we used to take over one of the jungle gyms at my elementary school and had this complicated story going with the jungle gym as our "house."

[bmoody]

Flying Ginny.

Merry-go-round, suspended in the air, no bottom. Nothing but a pole up the middle and bars. Mostly you'd just hold on tight and let your feet fly, but sometimes I'd crawl up the center pole and sit on the bars.

[wivabef]

Having grown up in the lakes and mountains of New Hampshire and never having access to "playground apparatus" in our backyard, my playground equipment is actually waterbased!

I loved the raft at the town beach. It was a goal of beginning swimmers to be able to swim out to it. The shore would drop significantly from wading to what seemed like a great chasm (looking back as a slightly taller individual with excellent swimming skills, it was probably 10 feet deep.) As my feet could no longer touch the sand and the water would become significantly cooler, a burst of adrenalin would fill my body. I would nearly panic for 5 seconds until my hand grabbed the first tread on the ladder.

Then, when the lifeguard was otherwise occupied (girlfriend, boyfriend, snackstand) we'd do backflips and cannonballs. Then, a race to see who could swim under the raft from one end to the other first would ensue.

Meeting a friend under the raft between the metal barrels that allowed it to float was a great place to tell secrets.

I guess our raft was like suburbia's clubhouse.