We were studying ‘Unusual Architecture’ in class yesterday, which made me have some rather vivid and unpleasant flashbacks. We were looking at the composition of indoor play centres as they pertain to the architectural process. Obviously there are plenty of rules and regulations that go into making those places, since it involves children, and people just LOVE their kids.
Yeah, Ma and Pa would say they loved their kids as well, which is why Pa made us our own play equipment in the wetlands out back. His definition was pretty loose, and I don’t think bound by any regulations either, so it was actually just a mass of wood all nailed together with a piece of metal that worked as a slide. Right into the swamp.
We were shown pictures of one of the indoor play centres now open in Bentleigh East for the purposes of analyzing the structure of the frames and slides, but all I could think of is…wow. Normal kids had this. I had to play with my brothers and sisters on a mass of wood with rusty nails sticking out everywhere. And then I was the smallest, so I always got dumped down the slide headfirst. There was a period of my childhood where I had to cut off all my hair, because it was the only way to get rid of all the swamp water.
Meanwhile, the normal children of Melbourne and everywhere else were enjoying ball pits, filled with harmless orbs of plastic that create an environment of novelty. We didn’t have that, though there was that one time when my brothers dug a hole and filled it with pine cones, and then threw me into it, all because they caught me reading a book about algae.
So yeah, maybe I really did have the whole Melbourne indoor play centre experience, except it was all home-made, and I’m somewhat mentally scarred. I think I’d prefer a real ball-pit, to be honest.
-Forrest Jacoby Jr. Jr.