Heavy Metal

The playground was yellow/orange, packed hard by running,jumping children. Stones laid bare by scraping and sliding and falling. Thick metal bars,rough canvas seats and heavy wooden planks rising high in the air. We climbed and spun and slid and swung on apparatus designed as if in some medieval time without any regard for children. The sliding board so high you could get a nosebleed ascending the ladder,its surface gleaming steel searing hot from the rays of the sun.
The jungle gym of thin metal bars, a maze rising up to the sky, decorated with upside down children suspended from the knees, the rock hard ground daring you to fall.
See-saws made of inch thick planks that weighed a thousand pounds or more came crashing down to crack your spine if your partner jumped off without warning. Thick monkey bars you hand walked, pulling your arms from their sockets as you worked your way across,feet flailing in the air.
This round thing with rails; a whirling disc going faster and faster and the "witch hat", a spinning cone you had to hold on to with your body flying outwards,ever outwards almost weightless,faster and faster and please,God please don't make me let go.
The swings were safe you thought, but you went higher and higher and your stomach was dropping out, or rising up to meet your throat, the canvas cutting into your hide so you stopped yourself by ploughing furrows in the ground with your feet.
And through all this the running and the jumping and the screaming and the laughing. The scraping and scratching, bruised knees and scuffed hands, holes torn in pants and dirt in your shoes. It was murder, it was mayhem, it was chaos, it was hell.
And we couldn't wait to do it all over again.