The Practical Guide To Entertaining The Cigarillo #2

Lucas Elementary
(a.k.a. The Dikembe Mutombo School For Kids Who Don't Read Good)*

Pros:  The playground on the south side of the school is just a short fence hop away from the warm, comforting embrace of the cheap beer on tap at the American Legion Post on Muscatine Avenue.  So if you're really desperate one parent can watch the kids and the other one can go have a beer and then switch off.   Of course the south side playground also had a spicy patina of cigarette smoke, cheap beer, vomit and regret- which adds a certain character to the place, I think.

Cons:  Lucas was a major disappointment.  This is not a toddler friendly playground-  first of all, the swings and one of the playground sets on the south side seem to be designed for the freakishly tall future NBA stars that apparently attend Lucas.  Which is fine- I mean, LeBron James had to go to Elementary School somewhere, didn't he?  However, when you've got a toddler like The Cigarillo who, although he's too young to know who Daredevil: The Man Without Fear is, hasn't really gotten the hang of things like gravity and steep drops from terrifying heights it's sort of a liability.

Not want to give up on Lucas just yet (after all, it could be The Cigarillo's Elementary School unless we move somewhere else) we took a stroll around to the east side playground and it turns out that was a major disappointment too.   Freakishly high, the east side playground had rules (rules vich must be obeyed!  Or zere will be consequences!) and had the look of a playground designed by some fitness freak that's trying to make recess into gym class and fool the children into health- it could have also been possibly designed by a psychotic German drill sergeant from a Monty Python sketch.  It has that whole 'we think death defying pratfalls are HILARIOUS' feel to it.

Verdict: Lame at Lucas.   We either need to put The Cigarillo on growth hormones (which we're not going to do, obviously) or move to a good school with a decent playground because Lucas is underwhelming.

*I just imagine a half dozen six-seven foot elementary school kids blocking shots, scaling the monkey bars and shoving kids aside who get in their way and wagging their little fingers and saying things like 'No, no, no, not in my house,' in their little Cookie Monster voices.   The image never fails to make me smile. 


Hoover Elementary
(SAVE HOOVER!  http://savehoover.blogspot.com)

Pros:  Decent to good playground that isn't freakishly tall or designed by a gym teacher.   The big kid stuff features a pair of strangely phallic slides split in two (immediately in my head, I labelled it 'The Splitter' because, well, I'm 12 years old.)  The small kid stuff is a decent size and has a slide for The Cigarillo and the weird netting thing he seemed to enjoy a lot.  Not a lot of heart attack potential for the Missus here-  I tend to follow The Cigarillo when he's on the big kid set just to make sure he doesn't take a left turn to see if he can fly/jump off of something and it works out pretty well.  The small kid set has a bouncy bridge which makes a lot of noise.  He likes that a lot.

Cons:  There's not a lot of shade and they've installed a weird fence thing on the back side of the school that seems a little 'Big Brothery' to me.  (After all, there's no corresponding fence on the other side of the school, so it's no like you're securing the playground at all.  Interesting sidenote:  there's also a gigantic temporary classroom where there didn't used to be one.  Why do they want to close this school again?)

Verdict:  I'll admit, not the most impressive playground we've seen so far but it is entertaining enough.   And it's moderately toddler friendly.  As a bonus, it's also just around the corner from The Cigar Parentals so if the playground alone can't cut it, there's more entertainment close by.