Turtle Park Was My Personal Shell on Earth

On my way walking to the train station the other morning, something interrupted my usual internal debate of “Did I drink enough coffee to get there awake?” vs. “Did I drink too much coffee to get there without stopping to pee on a bush?”

That “something” was the sight of a crane ripping a slide out of our beloved town playground, Turtle Park. I stood in shock as a variety of earthmoving machines crunched metal, tore up swingsets and left that bouncey-horsey thing begging for its life.

Bouncey-Horse: But I just want to give children joy!

Bulldozer: Eat plow, donkey boy.

As I looked on, my eyes welled up with tears. Not tears of sadness, more like the tears that Iraqi citizens shed as that giant Saddam statue was pulled to the ground a few years back. It took all of my strength not to stand up on a park bench and shout into the brisk morning air: “Burn it down! Burn it all down!”

Maybe the normal reaction should been more along the lines of, “Aww, I remember when my kids played here” nostalgia, but it wasn’t happening. All I could think about was that damn sandbox that my older son always seemed to climb out of with a fresh case of bronchitis. And that damn wobbly bridge that both of my kids wanted me to chase them on for hours. Just thinking about it, I can feel the panic rising in my chest, “Oh my God, I’m going to be stuck on this fucking bridge forever!”

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. It wasn’t all bad. Like, I loved that sweet moment in time when the sandpit became a place to “donate” toys your kids had outgrown (i.e. dump all the 3-wheeled trucks and other broken shit you didn’t want anymore.) That was pretty great.

I don’t know, maybe I’m a jerk, or maybe I just have a thing about playgrounds due to the Monkey Bars Incident of 1983. You didn’t hear about it? It happened on Long Island, like most bad things do. I was 9 at the time, and stood in front of the monkey bars, waiting patiently for my chance to cross without touching my feet to the imaginary molten lava and not-so-imaginary broken Bud bottles partying teenagers left from the night before. And just as I was about to make my heroic crossing, this girl behind me shoved me, sending me face-first for an afternoon snack of ice-cold steel. Whack! Mel Torme left his heart in San Francisco, I left half of my front tooth on the ground in Farmingville. I ran home stoically dealing with the pain (i.e. screaming my damn head off) and my parents whisked me away to a dentist who repaired the damage. Now, if you’ve ever seen me smile, you might assume, as I do, that this guy was not a recent Harvard grad. His ad in the back of Penny Saver promised top-notch dentistry and pet grooming, I think.

So maybe that has a little to do with my reaction to the Turtle teardown, and maybe it is time for me to get over it. They’re bringing in all kinds of new equipment (apparently there have been major developments in slide technology in the last few years) and as I watched them installing, it made me hope that it will soon be a place that fills families with happiness for years to come. And I also hope it has a restroom because getting back to my initial internal debate, I definitely drank too much coffee.

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