Playground: A Short Story

This experience honestly taught me so much more than expected…

“Mom, I’m going to the playground,” I explained. “Okay! Be safe. Make sure you are safe.” My mom agreed. As soon as I heard her “okay”, I bolted out the door to my friend’s home a couple of houses down from mine. Ding. Dong. The sound of the doorbell filled up the house in seconds. Almost immediately, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Click. Clock. The lock on the doorknob turned to the open side. “Hi! She’s coming down in a few minutes.” My friend’s mother spoke. My friend (I actually forgot her name) was my one and only best friend. Actually, she was my first best friend. In fourth grade, I exaggerated most of everything I said. This one time I had come home from

After a long day of insufferable work--in fourth grade--, I had come home to just go out again to play with my friend. Sometimes, I wonder where all that energy had come from. There it was, the indigo playground which looked beautiful. Every component of this attraction was perfect. It was like a scaffolding on the side of a building in the works with all its interesting buttons and gadgets. The mini zip line, the many swings, the enormous slides, and the tire swing caught my eye out of the entire playground. To start, we went to the tire swing. During school hours, we weren’t allowed to go crazy with the pushing of the tire swing, but now we could do whatever we wanted. At school, we had two types of people on the tire swing: the enjoyers and the pushers. About three people sat on the swing (facing toward the center--of course), and then one person asked the enjoyers what type of ride they wanted. I was one of the best pushers out of the entire school (my made up statistic). My enjoyers always had so much with me as the pusher. After four years of practicing, I had become an expert at the art. I started pushing my friend as she was laughing, and then I had the idea to jump on the tire swing as I pushed it.

This was when my entire weekend was flipped