When I was growing up, we had a neighborhood play park. It wasn’t all that different from the play parks of today. It had swings. It had slides. And it was full of kids, even on the hottest of hot days. Our Flamingo Street Park was the same as the parks of today…yet it was completely different. Confused? No worries. Soon everything will be as clear as mud. We had swings, just like kids do today. But when we swung forward really high, the metal back posts of the swing set came up out of the ground. Then, when we swung back the other way, the front posts came up. It was kind of like a giant teeter-totter. Dangerous? Yes, but we loved it. The swing set never fell over, at least not that I remember. But making those legs come out of the ground? Well, that was very exciting. In fact, it was sort of a reward for swinging really high. The biggest difference was the sliding board. Today’s slides are made of space-age plastic, and many playgrounds even have shade coverings over them. They don’t get nearly as hot during the summer. That was not our experience during those seven years while growing up on that old familiar street not so far away called Flamingo. Our sliding boards were made out of shiny aluminum. And when shiny aluminum sits out in the Georgia sun all day, it gets hot. It only took one trip down that sliding board with any exposed skin to learn the important childhood lesson number ten: Don’t slide down a sheet of aluminum that has been roasting in the Georgia sun all…
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