A beautiful Fall day, and a childhood memory

Not having any small children I don't spend much time in parks playing but I drove by one today and this swingset caught my attention. Remember as a kid being afraid you'd get going so fast you'd fly right over the top of the set, and hoping you would at the same time?? So taking all the advice to stop in your day for child-like playtime, I parked the car and jogged over to try it out.

2 things:

1) my butt has gotten a little large for this style of seat ;o)
2) no one has oiled those chains in a while and it sounded like the swing set was crying in pain (which it probably was LOL)!

Not wanting to draw any extra attention to myself I jumped off into the sand and snapped a photo to share with you.

And now for the funny story (ever notice when someone starts a story that way it's going to turn out to be one of those "guess-you-had-to-be-there" stories??!):

When I was young, prior to 4th grade, we lived in a small town of about 100 people and there was a school there with swinsets like this on the playground. It was close by - no more than a few blocks from our house.

Well, those were the times and place you could actually let your child go out to play unattended for hours, and on this particular day we had probably worn Mom out completely and she was napping. Her purse was on the porch (yep, didn't need to lock any doors there either) and my friend told me to get my Mom's lipstick, which for whatever reason I did. My little neighbor friend was wearing her new white sweater, which comes into play shortly LOL

Off we went to the playground with our new-found toy and proceeded to color every cloth swingset seat we could get our hands on. I don't remember exactly what followed, but I do recall suffering punishment bitterly and being completely degraded verbally by the neighbor Mom for encouraging her daughter and letting her wreck her new sweater. Huh? I'm pretty sure I was the victim in that whole deal. >;o) Seems to me I had an artistic streak just dying to get out!