Just a swingin'

I believe that children must be encouraged to play and use their imaginations if they are to become well adjusted adults. Mom and Dad didn't entertain us. They played with us when the setting called for it but we were expected to entertain ourselves.

We spent hours outside, imagining the picnic table was a fort, or a boat, or a life raft floating in shark infested waters. Mom would throw a quilt over the clothesline to make us a tent. We played in the sandbox and we watched the student pilots fly in and out of the air college that butted up to our yard. And I had a swing set! I wanted one desperately. I think Mom and Dad had to charge it at Sears but they did what they had to because I wanted it so badly. Daddy and Buddy erected it and set the legs in concrete to keep it from turning over. It was a basic set with two swings and and a seesaw and it was perfect. Buddy taught me how to pump my legs so I could swing myself and I flew for hours. I could sing and think and contemplate the wonders of my little universe. I don't think I'd started school yet when I got it, but I was heartbroken when I had to leave it behind when we moved to Arkansas years later.

The clouds entertained me for hours. I watched them move and change shape. If I stretched my legs straight out and pointed my toes I could even touch them. Ricky Nelson had a popular song on the radio called "Travelin' Man" and I'd learned all the words. It was about a guy who traveled the world and had a different woman in every port. It caught my imagination and it became my swinging song. I sang it constantly.

As I got older I found other uses for my swing set. The cross bar on the legs was a great perch. I climbed up and down on that bar like a gymnast. I learned to hang upside down and turn flips. I loved the topsy turvy perspective hanging upside down gave me. Everything familiar was different from that angle. Maybe that's why I can't look at a problem from only one direction or accept a pat answer.

I'm still a sucker for swings. To me they represent all things positive.