Swing Sets, A Personal Journey

It's a pretty big deal in a child's life, getting the first of their swing sets. Now, myself, I have a very dim memory of my first. We even have home movies of my Dad and older brothers putting it together. Looking back on that, I'm amazed that I and my friends ever survived using it; it was a deathtrap! It was the mid 1960, and the concept of product safety still have some? tweaking to do, before it truly became effective. So, the swing sets back then had metal slides, which would toasted our little bottoms in the heat of summer; they had chains on the swings that could pinch little fingers, and the seats of the swings were hard. One clonk to the head, and you could get a nasty bruise. Oh, and most swing sets had one of those things where two kids got to face each other as they swung back and forth. Well, on my swing set, one seat fell off, and my Dad never fixed it. The result: two spears sticking out, just waiting to skewer any kid who walked my!

How in the world we didn't all die using those swing sets, I'll never know.

Then, about thirty years later, it was time to look over swing sets for my daughter. We headed down to the local toy store, and had a look at the swing sets they had for sale. Needless to say, they had a lot of different swing sets! We could get everything from a small simple one with just a swing, or all the way up to a virtual house. Some swing sets had playhouses up on stilts; corkscrew-like slides, a sandbox under the house, and several other jungle gym-like activities.

We hardly knew which one to choose. Some of them, quite naturally, were not cheap; while others were quite affordable. We also had to consider the space available for the swing set. In that respect, we were very lucky. My wife's parents had given us a great house-warming gift: chain-link fencing around the backyard. What with having a toddler in the house, it was a wise investment; a cheap means of child security.

So, after carefully reviewing all the swing sets available, we picked out a nice one. It had a slide, a glider (that two kids facing each other thing; I finally knew what it was), some rings, and two swings. We needed my father-in-law's pickup truck to get the box home; it was very big. We could have had it delivered, but that wasn't the most economical way of getting it home. Also, the store offered a deal where they'd come out and put it together for you, for a fee. Now, that we most definitely did not want! No, this was the first of who knew how many swing sets for our daughter; we'd do it ourselves.

So, on the appointed day, we tore that box open, and started to get the parts out. Boy, there were a lot of them. I'd had no idea that swing sets had so many bits to them! We broke out the video camera and started recording our efforts. The funny thing was, our daughter insisted on helping. And, she was quite the confident little girl. She walked up to the box, grabbed some pieces, marched out to the yard, and started fitting them together. She didn't show the slightest hesitation or lack of confidence. Oh no, she knew swing sets; she made that clear, and she was going to put this thing together - all by herself.

The swing set proved to be a big hit with her and her friends, and it was much safer than my old one. It was clear that swing sets had come a long way in those years.