Swing with me

Today (actually, yesterday, according to the clock), I played. I visited the playground on which I spent countless recesses sitting on my "thinking rock" watching my classmates play. The rock is long gone, but the same wooden structure, as we called it, is there, the same swings, slide, tunnel, monkey bars, metal climby things, and wooden balance beam. I walked across the swinging bridge and slid down the fireman's pole. The trip down the pole was shorter than I remembered it. I walked across the balance beam, which was closer to the ground than I remembered it. I climbed to the top of the round, green, metal climby thing. We used to get in trouble for climbing to the top. A classmate of mine fell and broke his arm when he broke that rule. Today, I was safe. The climb was not as high as I remembered it. I walked under the monkey bars and grabbed them without having to jump. They were not as tall as I remembered them. I visited the cluster of trees that was so obviously a house to us, a fort to the boys. I was disappointed that it looked so much like trees today - not at all like I remembered it. The one redeeming factor of my trip to my childhood playground: whoever came along and changed all the rest of that stuff did not oil the swings. Those old, screechy swings were exactly as I remembered them. To the familiar tune of their screechy lullaby, I drifted into a nostalgic dreamland. Would that I could swing forever...
-mo
Moville