There used to be a playground not very far from my house. Three houses down, then accross the street, past the basketball court, past the baseball field, and there it was. All the other playgrounds in our development were much bigger, all big giants competing in size and flashiness, but this little guy had two slides, a funny mirror, a steering wheel, and a counter underneath for playing pretend "store."

Yeah, it was a very small playground, but when I was little, when we had just moved here, that little place was enough. Why bother walking farther to the bigger ones? If I had a friend with me two slides, a funny mirror, a steering wheel, and a counter underneath were good for hours of pretend play.

Now of course I don't play on playgrounds with my friends anymore. I take my sister to the big playgrounds, since she's not old enough to make serious friends yet, all her friends are from daycare and live far away. So she needs a big playground that makes up for the friend that you pretend play with for hours.

So we walk the extra distance and go to the playgrounds with the big tic-tac-toe things, the spinny pump things, the floppy bridge, the five slides and all those fancy climbers.

And we went back to the little playground today and it was gone.

The familiar little plot of woodchips... empty. Except for two metal posts with a long metal thing on top and a short wooden thing in between.

My best guess is that they took it away to make room for a bigger fancier playground, with at least three slides including a huge spirally one, a floppy bridge, a big tic-tac-toe-thing, and all those fancy climbers. I don't get what that odd two-post structure is there for though. I remember exactly what the old playground looked like and that's not a remaining part of it. And I can't see it as part of a new playground. For one thing there were no construction materials or parts or anything by the lot where the playground once was. For another thing, this odd two-post thing is scratched, the metal isn't shiny anymore, it's obviously not new.

Maybe it's sort of a shrine, or sort of a tombstone. Marking the place where a childhood memory died.

----

On another note, I finished that drawing with Hahli and Gali Nuva that I was working on. Enjoy.