[Hack&Lube]

It's difficult to walk the fine line between ensure your kid is exposed to enough risk and environmental factors (including disease to boost their immune systems), etc. but also keeping them safe.

I don't have much to add to this except for the fact that I'm still quite sad that my childhood playground jungle gym of death (I have a scar to the left of my eye, a fractured ankle, and several other injuries from our vicious recess play) was converted to some plastic sanitized soft rubbery feel-good area.

I remember the good times we had putting kids on a tire swing and turning it into a massive medieval catapult by having like 15 other kids swing it back and forth until the hapless passenger was thrown off 10 feet into the air. I remember climbing to the roof of the jungle gym which was quite high for a kid, probably 3-4 meters and jumping off for fun over and over again and learning to ninja roll the fall because I liked the thrill. I remember racing across a tire bridge where falling through the tire would mean slamming your jaw into cold, hard rubber and potentially knocking out some teeth. Good times but none of us died or suffered any catastrophic injury. The worst playground accidents were when the jungle gym was closed for repairs and kids resorted to other things like throwing rocks at each other which ended up fracturing a skull.