Remember the 12 foot high Dragon Slide of Death?  I don’t think that’s what the manufacturer called it, but that’s the reality-based name us kids gave the giant metal beast at our neighborhood park.

The great thing about that slide was EVERYTHING!

The climb up culled the weak and thinned the crowd.  The rungs had once been painted but years of wear and tear and love had polished them to a slick stainless steel.  They absorbed the afternoon heat which, along with fear, made your palms sweat and your grip become precarious at best.

There was no question that you would slip on the climb up.  The rungs were spaced too far apart for children to safely navigate and, although as an adult I saw that it was in fact vertical, as a kid attempting to conquer it that ladder always felt like it was leaning back a bit.

Yes, you would slip.

The only question was whether you would find yourself suddenly dangling, thankful you’d kept two hands on the rungs, your feet kicking about hopelessly in search of a rung to plant themselves on in an effort to regain footing, after having knocked the two kids below you off the ladder. Or, would you instead be seeing stars after having lost your grip along with your footing, bouncing your crotch off a lower rung, and landing on the sand below the slide.

Oh the sand! Remember the sand? Placed there to protect children; to provide a gentle surface to lessen injuries during the many inevitable spills and boggles of child-play.  That sand was packed down so hard that when you fell on it you longed for the sweet cushion of concrete.

Landing on its diamond hard surface meant someone needed to go get your mom so she could figure out whether you needed stitches…again… or just a quick swab with that excruciatingly painful, smelly rubbing alcohol to kill the germs and a piece of duct tape to keep your brain from falling out.

Of course there were a few soft-spots in the old sand box.  Didn’t take long for anyone to realize what animal had plowed up the tiny fluffy areas and what it had buried there.  So, landing on one of the soft spots definitely meant someone had to go get your mom.  You couldn’t possibly make it home with that stuck on you! You just had to hope that someone was on their way to get her as every kid on the playground took off screaming when you landed in that buried treasure.

When you finally reached the summit of the great beast it took your breath away.  Surely your tiny young self could see for miles.  You just had to be sure not to look down.  A 12 foot drop looks Empire State-like when you’re less than 4 feet tall!

The tiny platform at the top had a dragon head cut out of sheet metal on each side, complete with sharp horns and spewing fire silhouette, both of which provided ample places for your sweatshirt to get snagged causing you to hang helplessly at the top of the slide when you tried to begin your descent.  You’d be stuck like that until you managed to wriggle yourself out of your sweatshirt.

If you made the mistake of holding onto the dragon heads as you slid yourself into position on the platform the razor sharp metal would likely slice open the palms of both hands.  That wouldn’t cause you too much trouble, though, because the tiny 2inch high side “safety” rails running down the length of the slide were really too small for even a little child to hang onto, even if they hadn’t been heated by the afternoon sun to well over 5000 degrees.

Of course the safety rails weren’t really that important during your descent anyway.  You only had to mess up once to learn that leaning was a bad idea that was prelude to a long fall with a sudden stop at the end.

Once you were lined up and ready to go the ride down that shiny metal chute, perfectly positioned such as it was to absorb every ray of the afternoon sun, was a split-second, scalding adventure.  And quick as that trip was it was never quick enough. That’s why my parents gave us waxed paper to slide on so we could speed up that smoldering death drop.  Not only did that little trick help you make the jump to light speed, the scalding slide would often ignite the waxed paper and you would have flames and smoke traveling down with you. How cool was that?!?!

The end of the slide had a short flat region that appeared to the uninitiated to be some sort of braking zone.  In fact it was much more a breaking zone, as it served mainly to launch you into the air as you reached the end of your ride, causing you to land squarely on your rear so hard that it brought tears to your eyes, even though you had always, even in the middle of the afternoon during a heat wave in July, landed in the middle of a mud puddle.

Then, what did you do after you had finished your terrifying, often painful, always thrilling ride down the Dragon Slide of Death?

You took a deep breath, brushed off the mud you could, and started up the ladder again.

Just like in life.

You know, maybe we need to bring back the Dragon Slide of Death.

Laugh Out Loud!

-gina

What’s your playground favorite?  Shoot me a comment.  I look forward to hearing all about it.