There is a park near our apartment -- about a five minute scooter ride away -- that has a cool playground. It's cool because it has a lot of play fixtures that safety authorities in Canada would probably consider too unsafe to permit. Some of there fixtures I am afraid to try, but as I say "Screw regulations. You take your chances!"
There is a slide and stair fixture that Tony can use only by having me lift him up to the slide or by his climbing a very steep ten foot high wall with footholds that stick out but half an inch. On Tuesday, Tony, much to my surprise and apprehension, was quickly able to figure out a way to climb the wall by himself -- he was able to use siderails.
After about ten turns of climbing this fixture and going down the slide, Tony went to a second fixture that must have been forty feet high. To get to the summit of this "tower", one could try ascending stairs which were really a series of wooden boards strung up horizontally by rope; or one could try climbing rope, which was tied and strung up in looped footholds, from the tower's other side. Tony choose the "stairs" wobbly as they were. I held onto him as he did so -- he had a grand time while I was slightly worried. Going down the roped side of the tower was tricky. I put Tony in my lap and tried to slide down the rope. But it became apparent to Tony that he was better off descending himself which he did.
Tony, then, undeterred, lead me to a third tower that had a steep wall like the first fixture only three times as tall, and a rope foothold descent like the previous tower.
Tony surprised me with his daring. In all the other times, I had gone to the park I had never thought to give climbing the towers, a try. That was until Tuesday and not before Tony had thought to do it.
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