I remember slides like that (or similar but more "modern" versions) on every playground and every schoolyard of my childhood. Learning the personality of a slide was regular and intrinsic part of being a kid. Was it fast or slow? Was the slope steep or slight? Was there going to be a burn or a wet bottom involved in the process? Was there a mud puddle at the end? Would I bump off the end and find myself sitting embarrassed on the ground after a sudden dropoff? Or would I gracefully dismount and land on my feet at the end? Would I have to gather my courage at the top? Would I be sorry at the bottom? How would it feel on the way down? Would I want to run back around to the ladder and do it all again as soon as possible?
When I had my own kids I learned a new dimension of slides: terror that one of my precious babies would fall off the top and "break their brain", as we say. None of them ever did but I'm convinced that was entirely due to my neurotic vigilence. There was always that brief stage in their development where my toddlers would try to simply hurl themselves into space at the top of the slide without knowing to sit down first and certainly without any instinct to hold on!
I won't even go into the horror of those awful spinning "merry-go-rounds" that are so beloved to my girls in their memories but that are also, blessedly, no longer a reality in their world! I could kiss the park board members who eliminated that little deathtrap from our neighborhood park! One of them is both my friend and my stock broker. I may call him to say thank-you after I post this piece!
But I digress. As usual.
Just beyond the vintage red slide with the circle handles in the aforementioned corner yard, under the fluttering elm leaves, statuesque in the dappled sunlight of a July afternoon, stand not one but TWO teeter totters. When I spotted them earlier today my mind immediately transported me to my grade school playground and to a different age and lifestage. I could see the peeled patches and the chips in the thick forest green enamel paint and the aged, gray-brown, worn-smooth grain of the heavy wood plank in the spots it was worn bare of paint. All the details of teeter totters came cascading back to me. I had completely forgotten about teeter totters! How long has it been since I've seen one? How long has it been since I was ON one? I hadn't even realized that all the teeter totters of the world seem to have disappeared over the last couple of decades. I understand why but... oh the nostalgia!
And I started wondering... have my kids ever even SEEN teeter t0tters? Have they ever been on one? So I just asked them. Both my girls had to clarify, each with a quizical look and an angled arm, that I was talking about "that thing that goes up and down". Tessa (12) remembers playing on one with Emily (15) at Woodward Park in Tulsa, the primary park of my childhood, which we went to a few times on visits to my father's (ah the repetition of the generations!). Sara-Grace (8), our youngest, claims to have never been on one. Noah (9) has. Kota (16), the oldest, has too, he informed me non-chalantly with a distinct "duh!" in his voice. Ok, so maybe I'm not quite so ancient. I guess teeter totter eradication is a child of the most recent decade.
What will happen to a world without teeter totters? There is so much about life that I learned the teeter totter! How will my little one ever learn all those things that were traditionally learned on teeter totters? How will she know all the delicate politics of putting the lighter two of a threesome on one end? Or the compassion and tact involved in trying not to make the overweight kid feel bad about needing several counterparts to achieve balance? Or the pride of being bigger enough than the younger kids that it took multiples to even out the other side? Or the intricacies of just getting on the thing?
What about the betrayal of someone jumping off the lower end to send the elevated end and it's human cargo crashing to the ground? We all knew not to get on with the mean kid or someone who had a grudge against us. We all learned to gauge other kids in terms of the potential risk of the teeter totter!
What about learning the care of making sure nothing important (mostly body parts) are not underneath the contact point? Remember when someone (probably the grown victim of a bad landing!) finally got smart and put old tires underneath?
What about the judgement necessary to figure out when and how far to sit in front of the handle to balance out unequal weights? Or when one might need to employ and extra strong or extra gentle push-off ?
What about the balance acquired by learning to walk from one end to the other or trying to balance the thing horizontally while standing at the middle? I'm sure I built some important muscles and motor skills doing that! And I still believe that some contemplative thought processes can only be accomplished in this stance!
How will my baby learn all the trust issues of teeter totters? The choreography of getting on and the getting off. That moment of realization that your counterbalance is about to let you down -- literally! And there there is the comeraderie of long chats with a whole group of kids (sometimes forgetting to continue the motion) on at the same time.
The teeter totter was the leisurely respite from the motion of the swings, the speed of the slide, the exertion of the monkey bars, the competition of the basketball hoop, the itchy grit of the sand box, the nausea of the merry-go-round! It was an impomptu desk on which to scribble down the answers to that forgotten math assignment, study for a particularly ominous spelling test, or fold a piece of notebook paper into a fortune teller (which one of those boys would it tell me I'd marry?). The tetter totter could even be a descent place for a brief nap if you put your feet on the wrong side of the handle, stretched out on the plank, and could remember not to roll off the side!
All rythym and partnership and dangling feet, the scales of childhood justice somehow hinge on teeter totters! They are somehow representative of the way the world goes around (or up and down) in so many ways! The teeter totter was always the place to identify a bully or establish a bond with a new pal. Somehow an interval on the teeter totter could be the beginning of relationship building. There was always something sort of intimate about getting on a teeter totter with someone. There was a bond and a partnership implied. There was a budding of something on the teeter totter. It was where sleep-overs were planned, playdates devised, and new friendships concocted.
And the cadence of the inevitable teeter totter chant! "TEEE-ter TOT-ter, TEEE-ter, TOT-ter!" Be it verbal or non-verbal, that chant was always present on some level! I'm not sure I ever took a spin on the teeter totter without that chant in my head or on my lips. And when I look at the moving arm of a oil pump going up and down out in a wheat field or a cow pasture somewhere out here in the oil country of western Oklahoma, I can't help but hear the teeter totter chant in my head in relation to their similar motion.
I think all the relationships in our lives could benefit from a spell on a tetter totter! I think I need to put one in my yard as a marital aid -- a demonstration of how, usually, one spouse is over-functioning to some degree while the other is underfunctioning to a complementary degree. And then the proportions change! Maybe I'll send my kids to the teeter totter to work out their differences or to learn that many things in life are on a continuum.
Does anyone know where I can buy some teeter totter hinges? Maybe just a log and plank would suffice for now...
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wow...I'd never thought about the metaphor of the teeter totter for a marriage.
ReplyDeleteCherry bumps?!
you are a great writer.
ReplyDeleteComing from you that's a HUGE compliment, Jasmine! Thanks!
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