Asklemmy

Our school playground didn't have a rubber ground. Or mulch. Or wood chips. No. We had gravel. Like little rocks gravel. And a swing set. A big one. Recess for us was jumping as far as we could into gravel.

We also had wooden monkey bars that gave you splinters. We tried to skip bars, and if we were lucky, land on the gravel. If we weren't lucky, we would fall into a hornet's nest. Hornets loved those old wooden playgrounds.

But perhaps the greatest piece of school yard entertainment was the steel merry go round. We'd have one of us try to hang off of it horizontally with 3 or 4 of us sping it. Lose your grip and fall off? Where would you land? You guessed it. Face first into the gravel.

That thing would get hot enough in the summer to fry an egg, but as much as we enjoyed eating our breakfast that way, we lost it before the end of 8th grade. A kid from a neighboring school crawled under theirs and tried to grab the axel while it was turning. It ripped his hand clean off. But still, those were the days.