a windblown left side

tetanus builds character

The other day Amy and I went to the City Museum. Absolutely amazing. Yes, yes it was amazing in it's structural design and it's raw artistic splendor and it's unbridled creativity. Dinosaur staircase with rotating painted banister poles? Of course. Bus attached to the top of the building? Why not? Let the kids play in a hollowed out airplane! They'll love it! Amy and I played within most of these attractions and more, and I discovered that they were not built with 6'4" slightly claustriphobic men in mind. Nevertheless, we liked it, but the kids - they freaking loved it. It was like every kids dream - a kickass four plus story playground.

But mostly what was amazing was how obviously dangerous the whole place was. Miles and miles of slippery/sharp/rusted/steep/cramped staircases, slides, crawlspaces, tunnels, ladders and more. Kids saw the series of mini-halfpipes, the spiraling gerbil-like tubes, the guardrails made of discarded pointy metal, and all I saw was lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit. And what's really insane is that they don't even make you sign a form or anything like ski places do - I didn't even see a sign to the effect of "Play at your own risk. . ."

I remember back to the playgrounds we had when I was growing up, and thinking back, they really were rusty metal deathtraps. But fun like nothing else! Yes, kids got hurt - I tore most of my upper lip off playing tag on a frozen metal dome-like structure - but most of the time we were smart enough and lucky enough to not get hurt too badly, and we turned out ok. Look at the playgrounds now. They're all made out of round, soft, multicolored plastic. They might be safe, but I'll bet a lot of them suck to play on. Somewhere along the way we all started to expect playgrounds to be that way. We started to expect our coffee to come with warnings that it's hot. We expect everything to be made with the stupidest and unluckiest person in mind, while form, function, and fun take a backseat to some braindead paranoid overkill version of safety. As usual, The Onion says it best. I think it's awesome that places like the City Museum still exist - it goes to show that paranoia and litigation haven't yet sucked all the fun out of this country. Go there, it's amazing - and they are open late on Friday/Saturday, so sometime soon we are going to party there. Everyone's invited. . . .