Friday, June 30, 2017

Splish, Splash!

[WARNING: Here comes an old man rant!]

These kids today are so spoiled. Back when I was a kid if it was a hot, sunny day, do you know what we could do? Sweat. We could sweat. Maybe we could find some shade under a tree so we could sweat a little less. Or, if we were really lucky we might talk Mom into letting us drag a hose out onto the lawn, attach a sprinkler, and run through it.

Do kids today have to beg for a hose and a sprinkler? No, that's way too boring. They can just go to a splash pad! What's a splash pad, you ask? (If you're asking that, you're really old, have no kids or grandkids, and really need to get out more.) A splash pad is a park that contains any combination of several fountains, streams, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, showers, and sprinklers for kids to run through on hot, sunny days.


Splishing! Splashing!

The splash pads they have for kids today are amazing, and they're getting more intricate with each passing day. It used to be a splash pad was just a few fountains spewing water up into the air, but now they're even more elaborate with things like a "lazy river," where you don't even have to walk, you just sit and float through all the splashing. Or there are pirate ship themed splash pads, or submarines, or giant slip-and-slide roller coasters. It's getting to the point that if someone discovered the lost city of Atlantis, most people would just think it was a super-fancy new splash pad.

Sometimes it's as if the water has a mind of its own.

These days there's a splash pad in almost every town. (Even Chubbuck!) All you have to do is show up to a park with a splash pad and unleash your kids on it. Of course, they'll be fighting over the splash area with hundreds of other kids. And you'll need to be sure you packed some towels, and some sunscreen, and some water bottles for hydration because you can't actually drink any of the splash pad water because it gets recycled several times a day and the water you want to drink is probably the exact same water you saw that one kid try to use as a bidet an hour earlier, so drinking it wouldn't be in your best interest.

DON'T drink the water!

So, yes, splash pads can be fun, but no, you shouldn't drink the water.

Back when I was a kid, we had no qualms about unhooking the sprinkler and drinking straight from the hose. Sometimes we'd even put our mouth right on the actual end of the hose. Usually the water would be a little warm, but we didn't mind because it was water. And none of us died from it. (That I know of.)

And when we were done drinking from the hose and running through the sprinkler, we'd go find the shade from a big tree and sweat a little more.

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