A normal day at the end of the playground
“The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists.”
- GK Chesterton, “The Man Who Was Thursday”
It all began, as these things always do, with someone panicking about the swings.
Little Suzy Q clutched her juice box as though it were the Magna Carta said with the gravitas of a Supreme Court judge in complete moral certainty:
“Did you see Tommy? He’s swinging at a dangerous angle. Someone might fall and when they do, civilization as we know it will collapse!”
Greg, who had sensibly prepared for this apocalypse by wearing three backpacks in case the first two ripped, nodded gravely.
“Yes. The only possible solution is to redesign the entire playground. Then, and only then, will we enter a golden age of playground paradise!”
Within an hour, the slide required a climbing permit stamped by at least two administrators, the monkey bars operated under a standardized wrist-holding assembly line, and the sandbox zoning laws were so strict that children had to submit building blueprints before making the simplest sandcastle.
The seesaw was suspended at a perfect 180 degrees so that both parties could see one another without the vulgarity of movement.
Naturally, the children rebelled. Some hurled themselves onto the swings to defy gravity purely out of spite. Others engaged in sandbox skirmishes just to prove they were still alive. Fights broke out not out of malice, but from sheer desperation to feel something.
Meanwhile, the clipboard crew marched in delivering emergency lectures in between punches:
“You see, [WHACK!] you don’t need to be the swing king. [THUD!] If you follow the protocol, [WHACK!] even while biting Jeremy’s ear, [THUD!] no one should get sand in their eyes!”
And the sand got in their eyes.
Protests erupted with tribal slogans: “Cease hostile swing takeover!” and “End sandbox oppression!” While the children absolved themselves of any blame whatsoever, they pushed even harder:
“What do we want?”
“Total annihilation of the playground!”
“When do we want it?”
“Immediately!”
And then the bell rang.
Everyone dragged themselves inside bruised and furious with mutual loathing. Suzy Q glared at Greg. The anarchists plotted further revolution. The clipboard crew sulked, convinced they had witnessed the tragic collapse of Western civilization.
It was, after all, just a normal day at recess.
