Swing and a miss

• Posted on 7th July 2015
• in Uncategorized
• by Ashleigh

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Hello. My name is Ashleigh and I HATE swings. There. I said it, and damn that feels good to get that off my chest. I hate swings with the burning passion of 1,000 suns. I know they’re supposed to be nostalgic, wholesome fun for children but to me they’re horrific anxiety machines.

It all started on a sunny summer or spring day (hell, it could have been the middle of February this is North East Ohio after all) in 2014. You know, one of those quintessentially perfect days to get the kids out to one of the local parks or playgrounds, which was exactly what I did. Little naive me.

I took the girls to my favorite park. It’s my favorite park because it has a couple of cool little age appropriate jungle gyms and this really cool springy rubber ground covering for my accident-prone children (so glad they inherited one thing from me). It’s generally a pretty safe place. The only thing I don’t like about this park is, they only have big kid style swings which are surrounded by this safety mulch type stuff (more on this soon). After spending a total of 3.3 seconds going down the slides and running around, my kids of course, wanted to swing. My attempts to divert their attention failed, and continued to fail. Miserably. So, I eventually gave in, and we headed over to those oscillating death traps.

Things are going quite well at first. I’m holding my breath, pushing my kids at rotating intervals as they both yell “Mommy! Higher! Mommy! Higher!” as I’m, firmly saying back “No, this is high enough.” over and over again. Finally kid #1 yells, “Mommy! Push me higher! Right now! I want to touch the sky!” so I think “Fine! I’ll give her a nice sturdy push.” At that exact moment; in a display of Murphy’s Law (or preschooler social sabotage) like I have never seen before; she removes her hand from the chain to scratch an itch on her nose, and I push her right out of the swing. Right out of the effing swing.

I know what you’re thinking. Did anyone see? Oh, I mean, I know that’s what you were thinking after wondering whether she was alright; which thankfully, yes she was. She looked like she was tarred and feathered by safety mulch, and was pretty pissed off and embarrassed (join the club, kid) but she was fine. But back to the first question, yes! There were at least 10 parents standing in the immediate vicinity who just witness first-hand, me pushing my kid straight out of a swing face-first into a pile of mulch. Smooth move Mom-of-the-Year. After assessing the situation, I start telling everyone “She’s OK. She’s OK. She’s fine. Ingles? Uhhh. Muy todo bueno! Uh, gusto mucho. Tele novella. Cerveza? ” (and then proceeded to kick myself for spending way too much time screwing off in high school Spanish class, instead of learning to conjugate and whatever else I should have been doing instead).

The good news is, her recovery time was a full 3.3 seconds. Me, on the other hand, am still dealing with some serious PTSD. I know the general mental health rule of thumb is, to seek help when something starts to affect your day to day life. Well, this is how my kids “enjoy” the swings now, so I will let you be the judge on whether some light counseling would be in my best interest.

 

Good thing I raised my kids to have perseverance and to be innovative. And good thing there are still lots of other fun things to still do at the park. I’m sure they’ll find new ways to get hurt or embarrass me doing those things too, but in the meantime, play on. And if you live in North Eastern Ohio Schneider Community Park is a pretty rad spot for kids and dogs alike.

 

Stay safe. -A