The Mall Playground

We just returned from an hour or so at the little playground in the local mall. It's just too hot to go out after we almost melted this morning, so some A/C in a contained area where Owen could get some energy out was perfect. This particular playground is really more of a small play area packed with at least 2 dozen kids. No traditional playground equipment, just a bunch of hard foam animals in various poses for kids to climb on, slide down, jump from, and fall off. Foamed carpeting keeps the falls from hurting too much. Our lil' man always has a blast going crazy in there and there's enough white noise and other stuff going on that the baby is happy too.

My biggest complaint though is that the play area is really for kids about 6 and younger. Bigger kids are always running around on it, and even that's not a big deal MOST of the time. It's the one kid who is entirely too old (like 12) and has no awareness of his surroundings. Last time we were at the playground, this particular kid was about 10 or 11 or so, and was constantly doing dumb stuff like waiting for little kids to run by him and jump over their heads or trying to make ever farther jumps from the cat's head to the sombrero. When he slipped and fell during one landing, he whacked his head on a polar bear ass. He wasn't hurt, so I was free to laugh by pointing and doing the Nelson "Ha-ha!" Sure, if he broke an arm or split his head open, I'd be over there trying to help out with First Aid. But it is somewhat satisfying to see a thumping.

Today was an entirely different experience. There was a boy, maybe 7 or 8, with his mom following him around to pose him on the different animals for, I guess, "glamour shots". She was shooing other kids out of photos, having him put on designer sunglasses, and flash what appeared to be gang signs.

This was a little strange, considering there were probably 30 kids in a relatively small area, but the choice of outfits was what took it to another level of high comedy. The kid was in a stained t-shirt (like every kid on the planet) and athletic shorts. No underwear. We ALL know this because his athletic shorts was lacking in the ability to cover his hot cross buns more than halfway. It's one thing for a pair of shorts to fall down a bit while playing, but when mom is having you sit on a skunk for 3 minutes doing various poses while your vertical smile is saying hello...

Maybe I'm officially an old man shaking my fist in the yard and yelling, "Pull up your pants!" As you can tell from my last blog, I will never understand why the Lady Gaga's, Justin Bieber's, and whatever teeny-bop group comes next have success, but I'm really hoping the 8 year old public display of assfection will never be hip.

CK