Playground

In the summertime, my kids and I spend a lot of time outside. We live near a number of parks and the UW Arboretum, so we're well situated to easily enjoy the outdoors and really relish that time. Tonight when we were at the playground at the kids' school, my son looked around, and then said: "I noticed a difference between this school and my new school. My new school doesn't have playground equipment. I'm ok with that, I'm just saying I noticed it."

It broke my heart a little bit to hear him say that -- moving on to middle school is such an in-between time I think -- they're still little kids in some ways but in others they're ready to be more grown up.

It also brought to mind a song from my days working as a counselor at Holiday Home Camp with inner city kids from Chicago:

Rollin through the park tryin to make another hit

Little do they know that soldiers' legit

I'm not sayin this to put nobody down

This is what I see at the playground .. ya know!

The kids used to play this song and dance to it when we were back in our cabin at night, and I think I remember them choreographing a dance to it that they performed on skit night. Serious rhythm in those little bodies. Serious creativity too.

I talked to one of my old campers just the other day. She had moved her family to Oklahoma, but was back in Chicago visiting. I asked her how it was going, and she said good, but her kids were going crazy because they couldn't go outside. "Kids are getting shot outside every day!" she reminded me. It's so sad to think that for some kids, the outside time each summer that we take for granted either doesn't happen or is filled with danger.

Must. Do. Something. About: Inner-City Poverty.