A bounce house in Arizona blew away like in "The Wizard of Oz," injuring 2 children. When a gust of wind lifted the bounce house about 80 feet in the air, it dumped a 9-year- old girl out on the yard. Her 11-year-old sister landed on the roof of a house two doors down. Maan - and to think, they did away with the steel jungle gyms and monkey bars of MY generation, because they were "too dangerous."

A Fscebook friend rrminded me we wore dresses ehen playing on the ewuipment. But, of course - dresses were the only school day attire option in those days. Therefore, if any recreational feat requiring any degree of inversion was attempted, unless one wore either tights shorts under the dress, it was: "I see London, I see France..."

I'm not saying the likes of jungle gyms, monkey bars, and spin-fast-'til-you-puke merry-go-rounds were safe. More than a few busted lips, chipped teeth, broken limbs, and skinned knees were the wages of recess. Baby boomer playground equipment, like the adjacent, very asbestos-based, lead-laden school buildings where we were educated, may, indeed, have been designed to "reduce the surplus population."

Maybe the mid-century playground was just another facet of natural selection - survival of the fittest. Perhaps those who designed to thin our ranks thought: "If they live through this, the next phase is the draft and Viet Nam war..."