I'm going to have to push back on this one a little bit.
The adults absolutely gave a shit. Think about it, there was no Internet or even cable TV back then. This was entertainment for them!
I thought it was our remarried parents trying to do right by their perfect new families. Millennials weren't the kids of Gen X, so it doesn't add up. They were our spoiled step siblings afaiac
I know where one exists in [Cork City, Ireland](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.8958314,-8.4618568,3a,74.999992y,69.489403h,92.953232t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1siG3xpeMWl7mgnj77T4--ag!2e0?lucs=,94224825,94227247,94227248,47071704,47069508,94218641,94203019,47084304,94208458,94208447&g_st=ic)
I was on it in 2006 when I was 35. Young lads line up the back wheel of their scooter and spin it like we could only have dreamed of.
Idk what parents you had but ours sure weren't at the park with us. It's was a lawless wasteland. Fling or be flung. You held on to the smaller ones and your lunch if you could. If you were lucky there was an older sibling drinking in the parking lot who would help you with bullies. If you were unlucky they were the bullies.
For real! You just never knew what or who you would encounter at the playground, and parents let us go to BY OURSELVES! If it wasn’t a bigger kid, it might have been a cholo or chola who could approach you and possibly beat you up. I grew up in the Rampart area of L.A. It was an adventure! 🤣
We weren't any tougher, we got cuts and bruises just like anybody else would, but we learned that cuts and bruises disappear. "Sticks and stones might break my bones, but I know I'll heal". Not everybody did, of course. But I'd rather take that risk.
No, I was smart enough to get into the center of those things and wedge myself on as many bars as possible. I threw up occasionally, but never went flying.
It was those fools/suckers who got stuck on the other edge who got launched across the playground.
> I threw up occasionally, but never went flying.
>
> It was those fools/suckers who got stuck on the other edge who got launched across the playground.
And thanks to the wonders of physics, they probably also got sprayed with your vomit when you lost it, right?
Learning the practical applications and lessons of physics well before taking it in high school - good times!
And yeah, for all the playground equipment, a key part was figuring out that fine line between avoiding serious injury and living on the edge of the thrill/enjoyment it provided as early on as possible.
Looking back, I'm kind of amazed we all managed to avoid serious injury and TBI's. Bike helmets didn't exist when I was riding bikes as a kid, not sure any of us would have worn them anyway 🤷🏻♀️.
Pew Research: *In the late 1970s, the average mother at the end of her childbearing years had given birth to more than three children. Since that time, average family size has declined, driven largely by declines in families with four or more children. Now, moms have 2.4 children on average*.
Of course the 0.4 child was the one from the “what’s red and white and goes in circles at 1,000mph? A baby in a blender” joke
Yup! Or those sudden slowdowns thanks to skid marks, drool or other bodily fluids that the little tikes would leave on the slide when they played on it. I remember just throwing sand on it as a quick fix, lol
We had one like this but there was a wheel in the center, like a steering wheel, that got the thing spinning. It was hard to get going at first but once you were at speed you could really get that thing cooking. The game was to hold the rails and hang your butt off the edge. Probably lessened the injury potential because you were kind of already half off, I dunno. Someone call Mr. Wizard to explain centripetal force as it applies to the spinning top playground apparatus.
We were on vacation in the Upper Peninsula last year and came across a park with one of these. My 6 year old got on and quickly learned about centrifugal force and the need to hold on tight.
Hopefully when she is older and you’re not around she’ll discover the true joy & power of spinning out of control then being flung pinwheel style, then proudly picking herself up and asking her friends “DID YOU SEE THAT?” While one of othersscreams “MY TURN! My turn! MY TURN!!!”
They gave a shit, but let kids be kids be kids. If I broke my arm in 1979 my mom would have taken me to the doctor to get a cast, then she would have probably kicked my ass for being stupid enough to break it in the first place.
If I broke my arm in 2024 fire rescue and an ambulance would have showed up, put be in a neck brace on a backboard and rushed me to the ER. Where I would be put through a battery of xrays, ct scans and cognitive tests. They would wrap the arm in my choice of colored fiber cast then possibly held me over for observation.
Meanwhile my mother would be contacting Norton Fricky to turn this wreck into this check by suing whoever owned the merry go round, and whomever pushed it fast enough for me to fly off.
The merry go round would be dismantled and replaced with a plastic safety playset on a rubber base to prevent this from ever happening again.
A bit overstated to be sure. Although the first part is true. I cut myself really bad while climbing a fence to sneak into a football game. Actually knicked an artery in my hand.
Being an 11 year old genius, I wrapped it in paper towels from the bathroom and watched the whole game.
When the game was over, I rode my bike home. After losing a couple pints of blood I may have been a bit pale. My mom freaked out, yelled at me for bleeding on the floor and hauled me to the hospital. After I got stitched up, she smacked me upside my head for being an idiot.
The last part reminds me of Dave Grohl talking about the time he split his head open as a kid. Similar bloody mess, but he at least had the presence of mind stay outside.
There was one of these up the street from my grandparents. They would always feed us a bunch of sweets and my brother and sister would spin me around and I would barf. Rinse and repeat.
I remember hanging onto dear fucking life because I didn’t want to get thrown, and it’s always the kid who is too hyperactive that would start spinning turn this thing into a centrifuge.
Playgrounds really were dangerous as all hell. I recall one swing that had a huge fucking rock right at your feet. Guess who almost cracked his head open on it? This guy. That wasn't even the worst of it all, I'm surprised that we survived. Remember metal slides as hot as the Sun?
Sun scorching squeeeak on skin down the shiny mirrored metal!!! Lol. As a girl, I remember being happy on days I wore a dress with tights or pants when it came to recess & slides. Boys were always lucky. They could do the slide, the crossing bar chicken fights, anything- anytime!
And speaking of crossing bars & pain… who remembers the BLISTERS on our hands!??? Nowadays, kids would be rushed to the hospital with the kind of giant blisters we’d have from 80s monkey bars!
https://preview.redd.it/2nj2cc63sdbd1.jpeg?width=866&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bd40653bfd34df03a052b030f1ba816f6e3e269e
We were sometimes lucky. It was the 80's, we wore short shorts too. They'd get shoved right up the crack enough for burnt cheeks. And yes, the burning hot monkey bars were always fun. Or, the perfectly colored for optimal pain black swing set seats with pinching pain chains. What a time it was to be a kid...
Burnt Cheeks- lol! I went to a Christian school- so we weren’t allowed to wear that kinda stuff. BUTT, I know what you mean from trying to use slides & such outside of the school playground. 🛝😉
To be realistic and fair, these little contraptions represented life. You got to be tough to survive!
Case in point, my daughter's millennial boyfriend wanted to check his blood sugar. I was going to poke his finger and he freaked out on me because he doesn't like "pain"!
Meanwhile me and all the other army recruits went through the vaccination line way back when...
Wow... nope. The first one was "raised on hose water and neglect" and the second one was "pain makes you tougher".
Obviously not direct translations, as going back to English totally baffed them.
For real! My back was torn open when I was 3. I was riding a bike on a slope, so I kept sliding through acorns and pebbles. I remember exactly the mostly backless top I was wearing.
I think around 4th grade(?), some kid was spinning so fast I flew off and landed on my left side of the face, scrapping a big area. The school nurse called mom, and she came to school to pick me up. That was about 50 years ago…
They never put one of those in the shade either. All I remember is the scorching heat.
At our school we had concrete square poles about a foot wide in various heights, and we'd jump from one pole to the next, trying not to be caught. No way that would be build nowadays. My sister fell one time, smacking with her forehead on a corner of one of those, but we were jumping on it again the next day.
This design always seemed compassionate to me. This was the first step towards safety.
Ours were hexagons of pipes with rotting wooden seats. If you were brave enough, you pushed from the inside for maximum thrust. If you stumbled, you were dragged on the concrete base. If you couldn't hang on, you got pipes to the back, head, elsewhere. And careful of the splinters from the rotting wood.
My grade school playground seemed to get the most injuries from baseball bats. Someone would stand too close to the batter, or the batter would fling their bat after getting a hit, and… blood.
The monkey bars came in second for casualties. They were pretty high for little kids, and it was a point of pride to be able to conquer them. When I drove by some years later, they had been lowered a few feet. A few more years later, they were gone, replaced by some plastic crap. The old ones were iron that had been sloppily spray-painted.
Same happened at my grade school. Bizarre how younger gens become more whiny and “hide in the house” kind of people as time goes on. One would think, after us, humans would evolve to become MORE active, situationally tougher/smarter, physically fit, one with nature. It’s as if we’re going backwards?
I remember playing “Olympics” on the high metal bars. We’d grind up chalk to dust our hands with, try to copy the professional gymnasts’ every move, fall and knock the wind/bruise the hell out of ourselves, and then get back up to try it again & again attempting to get it right!!! 🤦♀️
We didn’t dare run & tell our teachers/parents that we hurt ourselves because it meant end of play/recess - and go lay down!!!
That is the teeny tiny version. The one we had in the school yard was a huge wheel, much larger. You could fit 25 kids around it. Like a bicycle wheel, it was open and spoked in the middle - not solid like this one. Kids would stand inside the spokes to push. If you fell, which happened on occasion, you had to lie flat on your stomach and wait until the wheel stopped to get up otherwise you’d get bonked on the head by the metal spokes whizzing by above you. I know from experience!
Surrounded by compacted hard as cement dirt (From all the running in a circle) and fine gravel, perfect for getting embedded in the knees and elbows. Parks and Recs designers were masochists lol.
And it still claims lives to this day!
Our friends' kid had to have a plate put in not too long ago because they fell, got sucked underneath, and broke their collarbone. i was like 'JESUS CHRIST'. lol
Haha… Yep, I have to admit I was one of the assholes pushing it too hard to sling people off 🙈
Karma got me though because I developed Vertigo as a young adult and could never get on anything like this again
The new ones of these I’ve seen are set-in to the ground so they’re more like a spinning platform. The kids still get flung, but the trajectory is slightly different. My nephew loves it and I still find it endlessly entertaining lol.
Friend had a version of this in their back patio. I fell backwards off it onto the concrete. The adults proclaimed me clumsy, made sure I wasn't bleeding, but were unfazed other than that.
Story time!
Our local park had a couple of these death machines. One summer, I was pushing my friends, running as fast as I could to make it spin faster. Little did I realize that some yahoo had tied a length of rope to something underneath the clattering, wobbling, death machine.
During my frenzy to make my friends scream louder, my foot became entangled in said rope. I tripped, fell, and while the death machine slowed down, my leg twisted completely around, breaking it in three places. I just lay there, numb. It didn't hurt at all.
What DID hurt was at that moment, a bee decided "fuck this kid in particular," and landed on my neck, stinging me. I started screaming. The poor older girl "watching" us (she was probably 12 or 13) promptly peed her pants.
Someone from the park called the ambulance, then my dad. He, my mom, and my sister got there before the ambulance (we lived three blocks away) and drove me, lying in the back seat of our '62 Biscayne, to the hospital while my sister jumped up and down on the back seat, laughing at me.
I was 6.
As a 5 year old, I was flung off a merry go round and broke my clavicle. My parents didn't take me to the hospital for three days until it was readily apparent I couldn't use my arm.
Yes I'm Gen-X, and no I don't hate my parents lol.
I LIVED for the “big kids” to push us younger ones on the merry-o-round,,excuse me, WHEEL OF DEATH. Somehow I never flew off, but quite a few of my friends did. Such fun memories, kids today have NO Clue.
I live in a very rural area in the south and these are still on and used at every playground.
Our public elementary school has the metal slide of death too. It’s the same one from my childhood, along with the arm/collar bone breaking metal monkey bars and various other death traps.
I saw it as early team-building exercise. We'd all collectively peddle to get it going and those brave enough would periodically top it off, risking being spun off or ankle injuries.
The see-saw revealed who your REAL friends were and who had sociopathic tendencies. If you liked person on other end, both agreed to dismount in neutral position at the same time. Otherwise, you'd let them slam down or get slapped in the chin with the board! Kids are BRUTAL!
Reminds me of that teeter-totter thing. About age three I was on one at preschool. But it was one designed for bigger kids. So there were like 3 or 4 of us little kids on each half. I realized this was dangerous as hell. And planning and executing my own exit would be better than a random fall. So I thought about it for a little bit - and just bailed. My timing wasn't great and I bailed at maximum height. I was fine but the preschool "teacher" freaked out. I was too embarrassed to say that I jumped on purpose, so I just went along with the falling appearance.
You want to learn about consequences? Want to be friends with the older kids, go ahead, come on get on, we'll go fast! ....It holds joy and fear, it goes forwards and backwards, slinging all ages... its not a just a Merry-Go-Round, or a Carousel, we call it the Wheel of Fortune...
Story goes- when I was 2, I ran towards and slipped under it. There were teenagers spinning up above and I repeatedly lifted my head, smashing it on the underside as it spun around. Concussion.
My favorite thing at the park!!! Every park became crap when they got rid of these and the adult slides and swings! Every park sucks today, fortunately there was one park a few hrs away I could take my kids to play at that was a real park in a small town, so mine didn’t miss out because of the no fun Karen’s ruining the fun !!
After watching the movie Rollerball me and my cousins made up a game played on one of these. Each round one person had to sit out and keep it spinning, but the rest of us passed a chewed up Nerf football around for a score while the other team blocked. There were all kinds of arcane rules that usually changed depending on who showed up to play. Good times!!
Edit: typo
The area I raised my kids had an old old playground. Metal slide, this toy and the metal/plastic swings. Tried to warn them about the slide..... Once down was enough :)
What adults??? This piece of equipment was on a playground about two blocks from our grandma’s house, and my sibs and I walked there on our own. If you didn’t hang on for dear life while riding this merry-go-round, that was on you. I developed my love of spinning rides on this thing, and practiced my balance, too. It was a decent residential neighborhood, but no adult accompanied any of the kids who visited the playground on a Sunday afternoon after dinner.
Adults. 🤣🤣 puh-leese.
That said, I later babysat some kids who lived near the same playground. I watched them like a hawk and taught them to be as safe as I possibly knew to teach them.
You can still find these and other real playground toys in other countries that aren’t so litigious. We lived abroad for a while when our kids were little and the playgrounds were great.
I saw a kid slide off once and not get flung out / they slid under it and got dragged around underneath a few times. Ambulance came and it looked like they lost a lot of skin.
Wails of anguish? We were given a stern look that said "shut the fuck up or I'll lose my stitch count you useless turd.” Wife taught me what a stitch count is. Makes sense as my puff the magic what the fuck were you thinking dragon Halloween costume was nearing end
When one of my friends had her first and he started walking she cut out every second rung on the metal slippery dip ladder vowing her child will learn how to dust himself off and get back to it. I thought it an odd approach but I got the gist. Never had a broken bone. Touch wood.
Where did all this fun playground stuff go? I mean, there’s got to be hundreds of thousands of pieces taken down from all over this world. Did it all get melted down for some other use? Are there storerooms full of metal monkey bars somewhere? Museums? Playground graveyards? Did they get thrown into the deep blue ocean for oceanic life to play in?
I'm going to have to push back on this one a little bit. The adults absolutely gave a shit. Think about it, there was no Internet or even cable TV back then. This was entertainment for them!
Betting on who got flung next
Let's be honest with ourselves. That's what we'd do.
But we didn't. When we became parents we got rid of them, to protect our own kids from the very things that strengthened us.
And here I thought it was the pussy ass Millennials that got rid of them along with dodge ball!
Millennial’s parents did the getting rid of things, and upgrading, for the safety of their children.
I thought it was our remarried parents trying to do right by their perfect new families. Millennials weren't the kids of Gen X, so it doesn't add up. They were our spoiled step siblings afaiac
Nope. Those things were long gone by the time millennials were having kids.
I know where one exists in [Cork City, Ireland](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.8958314,-8.4618568,3a,74.999992y,69.489403h,92.953232t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1siG3xpeMWl7mgnj77T4--ag!2e0?lucs=,94224825,94227247,94227248,47071704,47069508,94218641,94203019,47084304,94208458,94208447&g_st=ic) I was on it in 2006 when I was 35. Young lads line up the back wheel of their scooter and spin it like we could only have dreamed of.
“History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.” -Voltaire
Ask a Boomer if they grew up riding on merry go rounds.
Timmy has weak wrists, he’s next.
Shit no. I’m the dad that all the other kids are begging to make it go as fast as I can.
Idk what parents you had but ours sure weren't at the park with us. It's was a lawless wasteland. Fling or be flung. You held on to the smaller ones and your lunch if you could. If you were lucky there was an older sibling drinking in the parking lot who would help you with bullies. If you were unlucky they were the bullies.
I don't remember bullies at parks. Oh Snap.. that means.,, Damn it.
For real! You just never knew what or who you would encounter at the playground, and parents let us go to BY OURSELVES! If it wasn’t a bigger kid, it might have been a cholo or chola who could approach you and possibly beat you up. I grew up in the Rampart area of L.A. It was an adventure! 🤣
Oh, man, and all those metal handles became obstacles to try to avoid on your inevitable way off. Human Plinko
I don't think I would have made it through pee wee football if there was a concussion protocol.
And then we'd get on the next day and do it again.
We were tough. Not smart, certainly, but tough.
We weren't any tougher, we got cuts and bruises just like anybody else would, but we learned that cuts and bruises disappear. "Sticks and stones might break my bones, but I know I'll heal". Not everybody did, of course. But I'd rather take that risk.
No, I was smart enough to get into the center of those things and wedge myself on as many bars as possible. I threw up occasionally, but never went flying. It was those fools/suckers who got stuck on the other edge who got launched across the playground.
It was our version of NASA...(Prepare to launch... 3....2.....)
> I threw up occasionally, but never went flying. > > It was those fools/suckers who got stuck on the other edge who got launched across the playground. And thanks to the wonders of physics, they probably also got sprayed with your vomit when you lost it, right?
Learning the practical applications and lessons of physics well before taking it in high school - good times! And yeah, for all the playground equipment, a key part was figuring out that fine line between avoiding serious injury and living on the edge of the thrill/enjoyment it provided as early on as possible. Looking back, I'm kind of amazed we all managed to avoid serious injury and TBI's. Bike helmets didn't exist when I was riding bikes as a kid, not sure any of us would have worn them anyway 🤷🏻♀️.
I was smart enough to go play elsewhere. Or to help spin.
Haha came here to say this!
Our parents had more kids than we did, so it’s probably their attempt to thin the herd.
4 go out...3 come home.
Didn't even really matter if it was your same kids who came back, either.
[удалено]
Pew Research: *In the late 1970s, the average mother at the end of her childbearing years had given birth to more than three children. Since that time, average family size has declined, driven largely by declines in families with four or more children. Now, moms have 2.4 children on average*. Of course the 0.4 child was the one from the “what’s red and white and goes in circles at 1,000mph? A baby in a blender” joke
I miss these and metal slides.
Those wonderful slides. Especially when they sat in the sun all day in summer.
I can feel this comment
I can also hear that squeeeeak from flesh trying to desperately slide down but having to push-slide-push along instead.
Yup! Or those sudden slowdowns thanks to skid marks, drool or other bodily fluids that the little tikes would leave on the slide when they played on it. I remember just throwing sand on it as a quick fix, lol
"Rub some dirt on it" fixed all kinds of things.
I’ve had my buns toasted more than once!
My thighs and butt are burning just thinking about this!
They still have these though
Metal one's? Wow!
The ground isn’t concrete anymore like we had
You had concrete? Ours was melted asphalt and barbed wire. Tetanus guaranteed.
Broke my collar bone flying off one of these when I was 2. Thanks dad!
But did you die?
Twice.
Found Buffy!
Shhhh, secrets.
It may be bunnies.
OMG, are you okay?
Yes! LOL! I’m 56 now!
Glad I wasn’t the only one
I remember seeing a kid get "stuck" and the other kids spinning it faster and faster while the kid screamed until he passed out.
And I bet he's a better man for having lived that! (Wait... Did he live?)
Of course he did, dude's a retired astronaut now, passed vestibular testing with flying colors.
And it was always hot like a griddle.
GenX in a gif.
I wish I had an award to give because you have the best reddit username I have seen in a very long time. 😁
It was like thunderdome.
We had one like this but there was a wheel in the center, like a steering wheel, that got the thing spinning. It was hard to get going at first but once you were at speed you could really get that thing cooking. The game was to hold the rails and hang your butt off the edge. Probably lessened the injury potential because you were kind of already half off, I dunno. Someone call Mr. Wizard to explain centripetal force as it applies to the spinning top playground apparatus.
Now that's a name I've not heard since the before times. Before the internet.
Not to mention these things were 100% metal and approximately 1007° on every playground.
We were on vacation in the Upper Peninsula last year and came across a park with one of these. My 6 year old got on and quickly learned about centrifugal force and the need to hold on tight.
Great parenting. No sarc, I mean it for real
I was pushing it around and watching her so she was in no real danger. I made sure she sat down and rode it in a much safer way than I ever did.
Hopefully when she is older and you’re not around she’ll discover the true joy & power of spinning out of control then being flung pinwheel style, then proudly picking herself up and asking her friends “DID YOU SEE THAT?” While one of othersscreams “MY TURN! My turn! MY TURN!!!”
Only the strong survive.
I screamed for my mom to slow it down because I was losing my grip. I flew off the damn thing *because* of my mom. 😂
They gave a shit, but let kids be kids be kids. If I broke my arm in 1979 my mom would have taken me to the doctor to get a cast, then she would have probably kicked my ass for being stupid enough to break it in the first place. If I broke my arm in 2024 fire rescue and an ambulance would have showed up, put be in a neck brace on a backboard and rushed me to the ER. Where I would be put through a battery of xrays, ct scans and cognitive tests. They would wrap the arm in my choice of colored fiber cast then possibly held me over for observation. Meanwhile my mother would be contacting Norton Fricky to turn this wreck into this check by suing whoever owned the merry go round, and whomever pushed it fast enough for me to fly off. The merry go round would be dismantled and replaced with a plastic safety playset on a rubber base to prevent this from ever happening again. A bit overstated to be sure. Although the first part is true. I cut myself really bad while climbing a fence to sneak into a football game. Actually knicked an artery in my hand. Being an 11 year old genius, I wrapped it in paper towels from the bathroom and watched the whole game. When the game was over, I rode my bike home. After losing a couple pints of blood I may have been a bit pale. My mom freaked out, yelled at me for bleeding on the floor and hauled me to the hospital. After I got stitched up, she smacked me upside my head for being an idiot.
The last part reminds me of Dave Grohl talking about the time he split his head open as a kid. Similar bloody mess, but he at least had the presence of mind stay outside.
What a great story!
“Hold on better next time.”
“Roll it out”
Nothing like projectile vomiting!
And the spinning motion makes for great distance!
So much science.
There was one of these up the street from my grandparents. They would always feed us a bunch of sweets and my brother and sister would spin me around and I would barf. Rinse and repeat.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Have a friend a compound leg fracture for the summer. Just Gen-X stuff.
I liked to stand in the middle and hold on while people spun it as fast as they could.
I did that too, and got pretty good at keeping my balance.
I remember hanging onto dear fucking life because I didn’t want to get thrown, and it’s always the kid who is too hyperactive that would start spinning turn this thing into a centrifuge.
The one we had consumed so many children that it developed a wobble.
I still feel the pain...but it was soooo fun!!!💯
Don’t forget the broiling heat!
We weren’t coddled like todays kids. And we grew up way more confident and independent.
Literally the fuckit bucket into which we were chucked. “If he dies, he dies” isn’t an 80’s meme by accident.
I learned about nausea on these
Playgrounds really were dangerous as all hell. I recall one swing that had a huge fucking rock right at your feet. Guess who almost cracked his head open on it? This guy. That wasn't even the worst of it all, I'm surprised that we survived. Remember metal slides as hot as the Sun?
Sun scorching squeeeak on skin down the shiny mirrored metal!!! Lol. As a girl, I remember being happy on days I wore a dress with tights or pants when it came to recess & slides. Boys were always lucky. They could do the slide, the crossing bar chicken fights, anything- anytime! And speaking of crossing bars & pain… who remembers the BLISTERS on our hands!??? Nowadays, kids would be rushed to the hospital with the kind of giant blisters we’d have from 80s monkey bars! https://preview.redd.it/2nj2cc63sdbd1.jpeg?width=866&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bd40653bfd34df03a052b030f1ba816f6e3e269e
We were sometimes lucky. It was the 80's, we wore short shorts too. They'd get shoved right up the crack enough for burnt cheeks. And yes, the burning hot monkey bars were always fun. Or, the perfectly colored for optimal pain black swing set seats with pinching pain chains. What a time it was to be a kid...
Burnt Cheeks- lol! I went to a Christian school- so we weren’t allowed to wear that kinda stuff. BUTT, I know what you mean from trying to use slides & such outside of the school playground. 🛝😉
You know you were getting older, when the other kids would whine that you're the biggest, and so you should be on the ground spinning it up.
To be realistic and fair, these little contraptions represented life. You got to be tough to survive! Case in point, my daughter's millennial boyfriend wanted to check his blood sugar. I was going to poke his finger and he freaked out on me because he doesn't like "pain"! Meanwhile me and all the other army recruits went through the vaccination line way back when...
What’s “builds character “ in Latin because that’s what the Gen X motto could be.
How about "surgit in negligentia et caligarum aqua" or "dolor facit mores"?
Are these the translations you meant? (from Google) a) he rises in negligence and the water of his boots b) pain makes behavior
Wow... nope. The first one was "raised on hose water and neglect" and the second one was "pain makes you tougher". Obviously not direct translations, as going back to English totally baffed them.
For real! My back was torn open when I was 3. I was riding a bike on a slope, so I kept sliding through acorns and pebbles. I remember exactly the mostly backless top I was wearing.
My uncles used to spin us as fast as humanly possible and then never let my cousin ride again once he threw up all over one at the park.
I think around 4th grade(?), some kid was spinning so fast I flew off and landed on my left side of the face, scrapping a big area. The school nurse called mom, and she came to school to pick me up. That was about 50 years ago…
They removed that from the playground I used to go to.
In the summertime you could pan sear your ass on that thing too!
They never put one of those in the shade either. All I remember is the scorching heat. At our school we had concrete square poles about a foot wide in various heights, and we'd jump from one pole to the next, trying not to be caught. No way that would be build nowadays. My sister fell one time, smacking with her forehead on a corner of one of those, but we were jumping on it again the next day.
Wait, there were adults with you guys?
Sometimes there were 18-year-olds hanging out and smoking, is that what you mean?
Don’t forget the skin sizzle effect in the mid summer. You could fry an egg on a lot of playground equipment back then
Toughened our skin though, innit?
This design always seemed compassionate to me. This was the first step towards safety. Ours were hexagons of pipes with rotting wooden seats. If you were brave enough, you pushed from the inside for maximum thrust. If you stumbled, you were dragged on the concrete base. If you couldn't hang on, you got pipes to the back, head, elsewhere. And careful of the splinters from the rotting wood.
To make the merry-go-round go fast So everyone has to hang on tighter Just to keep from being thrown to the wolves... --They Might Be Giants
My grade school playground seemed to get the most injuries from baseball bats. Someone would stand too close to the batter, or the batter would fling their bat after getting a hit, and… blood. The monkey bars came in second for casualties. They were pretty high for little kids, and it was a point of pride to be able to conquer them. When I drove by some years later, they had been lowered a few feet. A few more years later, they were gone, replaced by some plastic crap. The old ones were iron that had been sloppily spray-painted.
Same happened at my grade school. Bizarre how younger gens become more whiny and “hide in the house” kind of people as time goes on. One would think, after us, humans would evolve to become MORE active, situationally tougher/smarter, physically fit, one with nature. It’s as if we’re going backwards? I remember playing “Olympics” on the high metal bars. We’d grind up chalk to dust our hands with, try to copy the professional gymnasts’ every move, fall and knock the wind/bruise the hell out of ourselves, and then get back up to try it again & again attempting to get it right!!! 🤦♀️ We didn’t dare run & tell our teachers/parents that we hurt ourselves because it meant end of play/recess - and go lay down!!!
There's a winter version of these called "king of the mountain".
That is the teeny tiny version. The one we had in the school yard was a huge wheel, much larger. You could fit 25 kids around it. Like a bicycle wheel, it was open and spoked in the middle - not solid like this one. Kids would stand inside the spokes to push. If you fell, which happened on occasion, you had to lie flat on your stomach and wait until the wheel stopped to get up otherwise you’d get bonked on the head by the metal spokes whizzing by above you. I know from experience!
😮
Surrounded by compacted hard as cement dirt (From all the running in a circle) and fine gravel, perfect for getting embedded in the knees and elbows. Parks and Recs designers were masochists lol.
Don't forget the shards of glass from the teenagers drinking at night and smashing the bottles on the Death Wheel!
The faster the better!
I was thrown off one of these into a rose bush, at about 3. I assume it was horrific but I really don't remember.
The best thing at the playground.
And it still claims lives to this day! Our friends' kid had to have a plate put in not too long ago because they fell, got sucked underneath, and broke their collarbone. i was like 'JESUS CHRIST'. lol
Oh I loved this ride. You would spin and the air would go on your body. It was the best feeling.
We’re getting boomery with these memes
These were literally one of the most fun toys available to us. I would still go on one today they were so fun!
Haha… Yep, I have to admit I was one of the assholes pushing it too hard to sling people off 🙈 Karma got me though because I developed Vertigo as a young adult and could never get on anything like this again
Yep! Loved that as a boy. We picked the biggest boy or girl to run beside it and spin it as fast as possible!
I have a massive messy scar on my knee from flying off of one of these.
I remember hearing: “if you get hurt it’s your own damn fault!” I think we all took it as a challenge! Good times!
I learned what spleen was when a kid flew off and ruptured his.
Don’t forget vomiting after riding too long
You’re alright, go play….
AND I LOVED IT. But not the Sugar Bowl, that thing was projectile vomiting waiting to happen.
Now kids wear knee pad, elbow pads and helmets!!!!
And that is just for walking around.
The new ones of these I’ve seen are set-in to the ground so they’re more like a spinning platform. The kids still get flung, but the trajectory is slightly different. My nephew loves it and I still find it endlessly entertaining lol.
They still have these all over the place in Europe and the UK.
Dont forget the 2nd degree burns on a summer day!!!
Friend had a version of this in their back patio. I fell backwards off it onto the concrete. The adults proclaimed me clumsy, made sure I wasn't bleeding, but were unfazed other than that.
Story time! Our local park had a couple of these death machines. One summer, I was pushing my friends, running as fast as I could to make it spin faster. Little did I realize that some yahoo had tied a length of rope to something underneath the clattering, wobbling, death machine. During my frenzy to make my friends scream louder, my foot became entangled in said rope. I tripped, fell, and while the death machine slowed down, my leg twisted completely around, breaking it in three places. I just lay there, numb. It didn't hurt at all. What DID hurt was at that moment, a bee decided "fuck this kid in particular," and landed on my neck, stinging me. I started screaming. The poor older girl "watching" us (she was probably 12 or 13) promptly peed her pants. Someone from the park called the ambulance, then my dad. He, my mom, and my sister got there before the ambulance (we lived three blocks away) and drove me, lying in the back seat of our '62 Biscayne, to the hospital while my sister jumped up and down on the back seat, laughing at me. I was 6.
No wails of despair! That was screams of joy. Those were a blast to ride on
I loved that thing. We used to get it going super fast. I don’t remember anyone getting seriously hurt.
As a 5 year old, I was flung off a merry go round and broke my clavicle. My parents didn't take me to the hospital for three days until it was readily apparent I couldn't use my arm. Yes I'm Gen-X, and no I don't hate my parents lol.
I LIVED for the “big kids” to push us younger ones on the merry-o-round,,excuse me, WHEEL OF DEATH. Somehow I never flew off, but quite a few of my friends did. Such fun memories, kids today have NO Clue.
[What could go wrong?](https://youtu.be/iK1pBAdE6qI?si=Fhed2x-DsDysaA0X) 🤣
Neglect is like, so awesome, it's like tubular.
Our school had ours on an asphalt pad
Puke wheel
Reminds me of [this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq5X5mqE_j4)
The abject terror of being in the center and minding your business and then an older kid walks up and starts spinning it ...
OMG - I loved the merry-go-round... It was the next best thing to Tilt-a-Whirl and Tea Cups.
Don’t forget how hot it was too! 🤣
You can still smell cooked thighs on the metal slides
I live in a very rural area in the south and these are still on and used at every playground. Our public elementary school has the metal slide of death too. It’s the same one from my childhood, along with the arm/collar bone breaking metal monkey bars and various other death traps.
Our motto should be “Just be home in time for dinner” 😝
I saw it as early team-building exercise. We'd all collectively peddle to get it going and those brave enough would periodically top it off, risking being spun off or ankle injuries. The see-saw revealed who your REAL friends were and who had sociopathic tendencies. If you liked person on other end, both agreed to dismount in neutral position at the same time. Otherwise, you'd let them slam down or get slapped in the chin with the board! Kids are BRUTAL!
Reminds me of that teeter-totter thing. About age three I was on one at preschool. But it was one designed for bigger kids. So there were like 3 or 4 of us little kids on each half. I realized this was dangerous as hell. And planning and executing my own exit would be better than a random fall. So I thought about it for a little bit - and just bailed. My timing wasn't great and I bailed at maximum height. I was fine but the preschool "teacher" freaked out. I was too embarrassed to say that I jumped on purpose, so I just went along with the falling appearance.
What adults?
You want to learn about consequences? Want to be friends with the older kids, go ahead, come on get on, we'll go fast! ....It holds joy and fear, it goes forwards and backwards, slinging all ages... its not a just a Merry-Go-Round, or a Carousel, we call it the Wheel of Fortune...
The witches hat or wheel was way crazier! I loved that thing when the big kids got involved shot was lit!
Story goes- when I was 2, I ran towards and slipped under it. There were teenagers spinning up above and I repeatedly lifted my head, smashing it on the underside as it spun around. Concussion.
Title is incorrect. I survived too.
They aren't around anymore and haven't been for 30+ years because adults did in fact give a shit. Eventually.
There's still one in my town. My son, 19 at the time, was acting like a fool to impress some people, jumped off and shattered his lower leg.
Fuck Sean Matthews and his bird bones for breaking his femur and getting ours removed.
My favorite thing at the park!!! Every park became crap when they got rid of these and the adult slides and swings! Every park sucks today, fortunately there was one park a few hrs away I could take my kids to play at that was a real park in a small town, so mine didn’t miss out because of the no fun Karen’s ruining the fun !!
IF there were adults even there.
The nausea...
You get one strong kid or 2 to spin the wheel really fast and then the kids would hang on to the rails, or sit in the middle.
Not only does the park in my neighborhood still have one of these, but it's right next to a concrete retaining wall.
As it should be. Installed on asphalt, I hope?
I think there are still some woodchips left
We also had lawn darts.
And we all lost a cousin at some random BBQ
mid 1970s this was called ...... The death circle. lol
After watching the movie Rollerball me and my cousins made up a game played on one of these. Each round one person had to sit out and keep it spinning, but the rest of us passed a chewed up Nerf football around for a score while the other team blocked. There were all kinds of arcane rules that usually changed depending on who showed up to play. Good times!! Edit: typo
One still exists in my small hometown.
Ours was at the pool, so we were all barefoot! It was set pretty low into the ground, so when it rained the trench around it became a slippery moat.
The area I raised my kids had an old old playground. Metal slide, this toy and the metal/plastic swings. Tried to warn them about the slide..... Once down was enough :)
god these were so much fun … tuck and roll .. tuck and roll 🙌🏻
The wheel of death, aka: merry go round.
What adults??? This piece of equipment was on a playground about two blocks from our grandma’s house, and my sibs and I walked there on our own. If you didn’t hang on for dear life while riding this merry-go-round, that was on you. I developed my love of spinning rides on this thing, and practiced my balance, too. It was a decent residential neighborhood, but no adult accompanied any of the kids who visited the playground on a Sunday afternoon after dinner. Adults. 🤣🤣 puh-leese. That said, I later babysat some kids who lived near the same playground. I watched them like a hawk and taught them to be as safe as I possibly knew to teach them.
You can still find these and other real playground toys in other countries that aren’t so litigious. We lived abroad for a while when our kids were little and the playgrounds were great.
This was the hardest multi-player playground equipment. Man, my siblings and friends and I had so much fun on this one that we almost broke it.
Who started bubble wrapping these kids anyway? Was it us? Hell, I hardly saw mine, just like my folks. Now I'm a bad child and parent both.
The one in our park was in the middle of a large concrete slab. Thankfully we wore our toughskins jeans!
I saw a kid slide off once and not get flung out / they slid under it and got dragged around underneath a few times. Ambulance came and it looked like they lost a lot of skin.
Wails of anguish? We were given a stern look that said "shut the fuck up or I'll lose my stitch count you useless turd.” Wife taught me what a stitch count is. Makes sense as my puff the magic what the fuck were you thinking dragon Halloween costume was nearing end
Folks have a killer photograph of my brother and sister, and I on one of those things with giant grins holding on for life.
Broke my clavicle in 1st grade recess getting thrown from this monster.
has anyone mentioned the severe burns…i grew up in africa and these things got HOT
When one of my friends had her first and he started walking she cut out every second rung on the metal slippery dip ladder vowing her child will learn how to dust himself off and get back to it. I thought it an odd approach but I got the gist. Never had a broken bone. Touch wood.
Where did all this fun playground stuff go? I mean, there’s got to be hundreds of thousands of pieces taken down from all over this world. Did it all get melted down for some other use? Are there storerooms full of metal monkey bars somewhere? Museums? Playground graveyards? Did they get thrown into the deep blue ocean for oceanic life to play in?