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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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As stupid as it was, sometimes I miss elementary school, and one day, me and my friends decided to walk through and revisit out favourite locations outside the ol' elementary school.
The first thing we went back to was the 2 trees. Between these 2 trees 6-8 years ago was a tiny scale construction site basically. We made all these little roads and dug dirt and made stick houses. Of course, it was often destroyed by the high schoolers, and by Derek, but we rebuilt it many times because it was fun. Diggin in dirt, what do you want? Speaking of digging, we dug this hole, right. We got sticks and sharpened them in half on a concrete corner (like a beaver lol) and used them to dig a very large hole. This hole was so large, that someone tripped and fell in it, and the school brought dirt, and got a backhoe to fill it in. I don't know why they did that, since all the dirt we took out of the hole was right next to it, but oh well. If you dug down deep enough there'd be this yellow worm dirt or we called it "premium dirt" because it was clean and it stuck together so you could build with it. After they filled in the hole we stopped going there as much, but years ago we buried a toy tractor there for some reason. I wonder if anyone found it. Oh and let me tell you, our hands were so dirty and the end of recess, and we didn't even wash ‘em! I'd just washem in the sink at home and my parents were getting mad at me cause it was clogging up the drain pipes!
Next thing we revisited was this green metal box. I don't even know what it is, it's a green metal box that's probably 3ft cubed. It's not an electrical box I don't think, some people said it was a "sports locker" but I don't even know if it's been opened in the past 30 years. 6 years ago, like an idiot, I went and put glue and twigs in the keyhole of the lock, and after all this time, there's a different lock on there, so maybe someone opened it.
Anyways, there were these assholes who walked around called "Duties". Well, they were called "playground monitors", but we called them "duties" cause they were duties. Holy crap they got mad at everything. Climbing the playground? NO. Digging a hole like a 9 year old? NO. Going anywhere near standing on that green box? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
Something that we thought was "so crazy!!!" About the box is that someone carved "FUCK" into the top of it. When I revisited it, someone had modified the carving a little bit so it just says "POOP" now. So much for being "Kool". There was also this concrete box next to the green box. It was probably about half the height, but they still didn't want us on it. The concrete box had a locked metal lid, I don't know what it is either, all I know is it goes down. One time we peeked inside and theres this spooky sign that says "Danger: Do not enter, confined space". Back in grade 3 that was the spookiest thing ever, and everyone was going all like "y'know, some kid died down there and they put the lid on to cover it up" "oh come on, Lucas you just made that up". Also, another thing we dug up was a piece of concrete the same size of the top of the concrete box, and probably 5 inches thick. I still don't know what that was either, but the duties got so mad at us for digging it up, it started more people going on about what the school's hiding from us!
Anyways, enough of stupid boxes, we went to the other side of the field to revisit a tree that we called the "water tree". Yeah, sounds like some kind of magical tree of life, but it's actually just a normal tree with a really cool naturally forming track. Lucas brought this water bottle to school and kept going into the bathroom to fill it up so we could pour it down this tree. I even brought my awful camera one time and filmed it, it was so cool!
Another tree was "the stump". And guess what it was. It was probably cut down 10 years ago at the time, it was so rotten. For some reason, one time we thought "I wonder if we can destroy this stump to pieces". So we started working on that.
We started with sticks, which did a decent amount of damage. Then we got better sticks, and smacked them against that stump until the sticks broke and the stump was slightly more broken. Later, while walking trough, we noticed a pile of bricks in someone's backyard next to the school, so we got a long stick, reached into this dude's backyard, and stole a brick. Yeah, we stole one single brick from some guy's backyard. Living next to a school would suck.
But this brick was one of the most useful tools in rekking this stump. We would just stand in front of the stump, and launch the brick at it, and chunks would fly off the stump. We threw that brick so hard that eventually, It broke in half…. So we just used the 2 newly formed bricks to throw at the stump. But as they later got smaller and more chipped down, we just threw the brick pieces back into this guys backyard. What a bunch of assholes. *crash* "uh here's your um brick back. Sorry" Eventually, we had about half the stump gone until we could do no more. The remaining half was not as rotten, and was even resisting the power of the remains of the brick, so… we just gave up and left it.
But now, 6 years later, we revisited the stump and looked at it. It looked about the same where we left it, it didn't look like anyone else was stupid enough to try to obliterate a stump with bricks. But, I just got up and decided to fukkin drop kick this thing, and that unbreakable half, in a loud *CRACK* sound broke off of the base, and about 500 beetles crawled out of it. After the beetles got all over me, that was when we decided to get the hell out of there.
The last thing we revisited was the playground. I haven't been on the playground for years, but I still remember the different sections. Depending on what grade you were in, you had your "days" on each section of equipment. For example, if you were in Grade 3-5, every other day only the 6-7s would be allowed on the swings!!! But now, since it's not even recess, and we don't go to this school, we could go on whatever we wanted now!
The swings were my favourite. Me and my friends always got the best swing set, the one by what we called "the Baby Swing", also known as "The Celebrity Throne". This thing was awesome, though the awesomeness only lasted until the duties noticed. You would sit in this huge red swing, and have 2 people, one in the back, one in the front, pushing you into the stratosphere. This thing got crazy, especially when it started to get too high, and the chain would get loose, and retighten with a *THUNK*. Eventually the pushers would go off track, and one time I ended up smashing into the metal support of the swing, but I managed to stay on! I remember when Lucas fell off and the baby swing came back to hit him in the head while he was getting up. The duties got very mad at us for using "the Baby Swing" in this manner, and for calling it "the baby swing", cause apparently it's the "special needs" swing, even though the special needs kids at school never went on it. Cmon, it's a baby swing!
Another thing was this huge red tower made of ropes. It was pretty awesome, and I'm surprised that the school ever even let us on it. I mean, the school got hecka mad at me for climbing a 8 foot tall chainlink fence, but no worries about the 17 foot tall rope climbing thing. It was awesome to get to the top, and just sit and admire the view, but if you slip, you're falling to your death and it's gonna hurt the whole way. For like 10 years, they called this thing "the new playground equipment", but they eventually decided in 2017 that it needed a new name. Everyone in each class would come up with a name, the class would vote for the best, and then the best ones from each class would go up against each other in the vote of the century. The finalists were "Big Red", "The Eiffel Tower", and "The Ropey Climby Stringy Thingy". Yes, "ropey climby stringy thingy" actually made it that far, obviously submitted by the TDT itself. We lost by like 10 votes to "Big Red" meaning that the election was obviously rigged, because the school thought "oh man there is no way we're calling this "the ropey climby stringy thingy" with a straight face" (drawing with worried look and looking at election on tv). Most kids at school called it "The Eiffel Tower" already, but the new name was officially "Big Red", which nobody actually calls it.
Next to the ropey climby stringy thingy, were these horrible spinning things. There was a blue, red and gray one, blue being the only one you could go on, as the red one was "the dog piss one" and the gray one was "the reece tack" one, so they must be avoided at all costs. Anyways, I don't even know why these are here, no matter what, going on these will not end in a positive way. We called em "the vominators", because it's a spinning thing you grab onto, and guess what, it spins really fast!!! Great, get a bunch of 3rd graders vertigo right on the playground, last time I went on it during our revisit, my vision was spinning for a good 30 seconds after I got off.
Now, over to the main part of the playground, we had the old playground and the new playground.
The old playground had these monkey bars, and when I was in grade 3, they were like 50 feet in the air, how do you even do this? I remember we had to climb up the pole they were attached to just to get on them, even in grade 7 I could just barely reach them. They also had these circle bars that spun around, you were supposed to spin from one to the next, except that they were all rusty and shit, except for the first one, which someone jumped onto and spun their legs around into the back of my head, half expected to wake up to "hey, you're finally awake", but no, I was awake, just with a face full of wood chips. The old playground had this blue slide of static electricity death. Back in grade 2, for some reason I went there with these random kids I didn't even know, to throw pencil sharpeners up the slide. Yeah, I found this box of pencil sharpeners in the class, so guess what, I stole it, and we thought it was the coolest thing ever to throw them up the slide and see how far they got. Eventually, we broke every sharpener in that bin, and the teacher never mentioned it was gone. I wish I could see the sharpener pals again and be like "hey u remember when we threw those sharpeners up the slide?" And they'd be like "no".
Anyways, the new playground was pretty awesome. It had all kinds of stuff, monkey bars that didn't suck, 2 slides, and a solid metal "zipline". There was this spiral slide, and for some reason we did this thing where someone would sit at the bottom, and a bunch of other kids would try and slide down and see if the kid at the bottom could hold it, and we called this game "the traffic jam". At some point, apparently someone melted a razor blade into the slide. I don't even know if this was true, but eventually the school removed it and melted new plastic into the hole. Later, I peeled the plastic out of the hole, and the hole is still there, so yea, there you go.
This playground was pretty awesome, but I don't really have a lot to say about it, other than "The Playground Challenge". You can play on the bottom side of the playground, but what about the top? The playground challenge, was to climb on top of the playground, and do a full loop without dying. So, as you can see from this diagram below, it was intense.
You'd do most of this by climbing like a monkey, and sliding your butt across the top. The "zipline" was one of the harder parts. It's higher up than the rest, you have nothing else to grab onto, and it's super slippery for some reason. One time a gust of wind blew by and it dang near sent me into that stupid springy thingy by the playground. Yeah, the stupid springy thingy. I still have no clue what this is! It's a piece of plastic on 2 springs. It's not one of those playground motorbikes on the spring, (image of motorbike fun and not plastic thing fun) cause it has 2 springs, and you can't sit on it, and it barely moves. What the hell is this? Seriously? I still have no clue why this exists. So just like the good old days, I kicked the shit out of it? Why? Cause it's stupid, that's why!
So that was it. We went and revisited my favourite memories of South Park. If I'm going to admit, I felt a little bit of nostalgia, even if it wasn't that long ago. Also, I climbed that 8ft fence again. In your face, duties.