My Favorite Childhood Memory Tried to Kill Me

Think back to some of your favorite things when you were a kid. Don't you think the stuff we had was more unsafe than kids have now?

I'm from Schenectady so I spent a lot of my time as a kid walking to the McDonalds on Union Street or spending time at the Central Park playground with my friends. To this day, so many years later, I remember one thing in that playground - the slide.

I know what you're thinking, "A slide? Every playground has a slide!" Sure, but not like this one. Instead of climbing up a ladder to slide down, you climbed up the slide (or attempted to anyway) to come back down. The fun of the slide wasn't the way down, it was the way up.

The slide has since been taken out of the park because of updates and safety reasons. I was thinking back to it though and thought about just how many times I fell off of that thing. The top was high with nothing keeping me from flying off the back. Kids don't take turns so I probably permanently have a sneaker mark on my hands from how many times I was stepped on.

Thinking back, I could've been killed. You know what though, I wasn't. I had a great childhood and even years later, I would play on that thing again. There were great memories made with my friends on that Schenectady death trap and playground equipment just isn't made the same as it used to be.