what we talk about when we talk about parks

So here we are, there's a child, he's tired of stomping around the house and getting pulled off of things, we have no yard because we live in the core of a huge city where land is prohibitively expensive, what do we do? We go to parks, we use playgrounds, we climb on climbers, we bounce harmlessly off of playscapes. I'm using that last term, which I feel like I've heard in architectural or planning circles, like I know that it means the surface the playground structures are built on, the material of rubber shavings or wood chips or dirt clods that the child falls on when they connect with the ground, but really I have no idea. It might refer to the structures themselves, or anything child-sized whatsoever within a precinct of low walls or railroad ties in a corner of a park. Playground, playscape, playlot--whatever the lexicon, that's the scene now, at least once a day.

It occurred to me recently, as the boy staggered around locating every cigarette butt, bottle cap, and tiny little baggie in the half-acre lot, that for all the hours my friends and I misspent sitting on slides and monkey bars in our youth, I never actually thought about the fact that tiny little people used these places in ways they were intended, in the sunlight, and that maybe it wasn't actual malice or even bad judgement, just sheer obliviousness, that led people to leave this stuff in a toddler's path.

Which is what makes a fence nice. The newer playgrounds, the extensively rubberized ones, are more likely to have that fence explicitly showing where they start and finish, where dogs are forbidden and the very small can wander at will. We tried out a new one this morning, in a brand-new riverside neighborhood of postmodern high-rises and loft conversions, located on what was a virtual landfill only a few years ago. A beautiful playground--both toddler and grade-school climber walker slider bridge structures, low hillocks made of the same rubberized stuff as the ground, things to rotate and push and pull to demonstrate cause and effect, fresh springs and bearings all around, padded everything, the safest swings known to man. Well dressed children, killer strollers, trim parents who seemed like they'd never made a bad decision in their lives. Not a speck of trash, not so much as an organic cheddar bunny on the ground. Even the dogs in the dog park next door seemed well adjusted. It was a Saturday morning, so with the regular caregivers probably getting a break, the park was filled with oddly modulated parental tones at times verging into the maniacally enthusiastic, the sound of people used to talking to other adults all week: "You want me to spin you? OH THAT'S FUN! Oh, all done? You want to SLIDE?"

It was hell on earth, basically, a precisely engineered playspace in which every object had a specific developmental outcome attached to it and was almost impossible to misuse. I made for the (effortlessly functioning) gate as quickly as I could pry the boy off some kid's titanium micro-scooter, and we went down by the river to say the word for duck over and over, walk back and forth pointing at things, and wave at barge operators.