Recess

When I was a kid, just the word evoked excitement – there were so many fun things to do.  If the weather was nice, you got to go outside!  A break from school!  There were rings to ring, rungs to run, slides to slide down and all sorts of bars to clamor over.  There were balls to throw and kick, girls to chase with hair to pull, and painted lines to hop over, serve into and get played out of.  There was grass to run in, sand to dig in and dirt to slide on.  If you were a loner, there were bugs to crawl after, butterflies to try to capture, and clouds to imagine make shapes in.  There were people to watch, shade to sit in and little rocks to kick.  There was a whole world of adventure and it was just outside our classrooms in the schoolyard.

 

Even if the weather was terrible, we still got recess.  Sometimes we got to go to the gym.  There was basketball, foursquare and the dreaded dodge-ball.  There might have been mats with balance beams, and some other things to crawl around on, or there might have been a stage where we could act like we were putting on a show.  Sometimes we stayed in the classroom.  Often the teacher would have planned ahead and we would have a fun activity that involved us all doing something with our hands while imagining with our minds.

 

I don’t have little kids anymore – mine are 20 and 21 now – but I sure hope that the little kids these days have the same opportunities that I had growing up.  I hope they don’t just sit around texting and playing video games on their phones.  It’s one thing to get outside and get some fresh air, but the exercise of the body and the mind are more important.

Tankers

I posted awhile back about recess at school. There was something that was unique to our school because of where it was located, and it meant that every recess held the possibility of having a very cool event occur – if the timing was just right and a random truck driver was in the mood to oblige a playground full of kids.

I lived in North Seattle in an area called Richmond Beach. My grade school was on the main route up from Puget Sound, and was only about a half a mile up from the water. There was a Standard Oil Refinery not far north of that where ships would off-load oil and then tanker trucks would haul gas/oil up out of Richmond Beach to deliver to various locations around the area.

These tanker trucks or just tankers, as we called them, came right up a long hill right next to the grade school playground. The playground was level with road at the top end, but had a huge built up wall that overlooked that hill at the other end nearer the water. There were always a few kids who seemed to be listening intently for the sound of the trucks chugging up the hill. The shout would ring out across the playground “TANKER!!!”, and instantly every kid out there would make for the fence that overlooked the road and clamor for a front row spot. And then, in an incredible unanimous uproar of children’s voices, the shouting would begin, and we would all start pumping our fists in an action to simulate the pulling of the air horn.

This would go on for what seemed – to us – an eternity before the driver would hopefully finally succumb to our insistent pleas and let go a long, loud blast. This was rewarded with a huge chorus of screams and cheers from the entire playground, and some happy “thank you” waves to the driver. It was so cool! We had all banded together and rallied for a common cause and made something happen! Yeah!

You know how when you’re a kid, you always think that when you grow up, you’ll become a teacher, and be a cool teacher that all the kids like? Or that you’ll be a bus driver and be a cool bus driver that everyone likes? Well, I added to that childhood fantasy the dream of becoming a tanker driver and being a cool tanker driver that everyone would like because I would always honk my air horn for kids on playgrounds whenever they asked.

Recess

Of course, we only had recess from 1st through 6th grade, the same as today. Our playground was one large field – well – large in my mind, but I think much smaller that many of the school playfields that are common today. I recall that there was some sort of a large collection of balls and other equipment for playing games. There wasn’t any organized games, it was kind of a decision made by the old “majority rules” concept. And - the games were only self-refereed and usually were fairly incident-free.

I think that the biggest difference from today’s playgrounds was the area where the bars were. There were various configurations of bars that we all played on. They were all made out of metal – probably iron – pipes. So, they were really hot or cold to the touch depending on the weather. There were ladders (suspended horizontal ladders) – were they called monkey bars? The rings, that you would swing from and clang loudly as you swung from one to the next. There were horizontal single bars that you wrap your knee around and spin in circles. I think we had a merry-go-round, and a few others. There was always a huge rush to get to your favorite apparatus first, and then perform as best as you could in front of all of your friends.

The area where all these bars were was on asphalt. It’s probably a little different than the bark, sand, grass or rubberized mats that are more commonly underfoot for the kids out on recess today. It does seem that today there are a lot of plastic or composite materials in the large variety of playground equipment that kids play on. And there are things like ships and forts, bridges and hideouts... lots of cool things we never had.

One thing we didn't have to worry about... there were no kids hanging out smoking behind the portables. It was something that would never have happened or been a concern back when and where I grew up.

Do you have memories of recess from your childhood? I’d love to hear them!