Playground Safety

On Thursday night, Josh, Michelle and I found an incredible playground in Beersheva. There were elaborate towers with long, thoroughly unsafe tube slides that must have been 10 yards high if they were a foot (or more, I'm not good with distances). Safety, however, is not a high priority. For example, in North America, the see-saw has been phased out of childhood. This is probably for a number of reasons: a) it shames the fattest kids in an overt manner, and b) it's really dangerous. I have some experience with the latter phenomenon: when I was five, I was playing on a see-saw in the park near my house with my older sister and I sprained my neck. In this playground, as in many in Israel, you can find see-saws. In a land when riding the bus can be unsafe, playgrounds can be positively deadly and nobody cares. Indeed, perhaps these playgrounds are really early stage training facilities for the IDF.