I have fond memories of the boulder-sized jungle gyms and 20-foot tall slides that dominated parks when I was a child. Playgrounds today just don’t stack up. With their plastic structures and rubber flooring, modern playgrounds are boring at best and dangerously dull at worst.

Whatever happened to the rickety death traps many of us grew up with? You remember the ones – towering monkey bar pyramids, metal merry-go-rounds that flung you off if you didn’t hang on for dear life, seesaws and teeter-totters that catapulted kids skyward. And who could forget the zip lines, balance beams, and rope climbing walls that challenged our strength and coordination? Those playgrounds built character and courage! Kids nowadays will never experience the adrenaline rush of a near-vertical slide or the joy of crashing into the ground from the monkey bars.