Allison Says

Apparently, slides are rather horrifying. At least, they are if you’re my son.

Alex has never really been into slides. Every once in a blue moon he’ll go down a slide, but mostly he will climb to the top and then say “no down.” He doesn’t want to go down it. If I hold his hand he may consider it, but even then it’s a long shot.

I can’t say that I totally blame him. I mean, letting yourself fall down some unknown material that, in theory, will take you down to the ground? No idea how fast? No idea how sturdy? Who came up with this?! Not exactly reassuring. But I loved slides as a kid.

One of our local playgrounds here is often referred to as “The Blue Slide Park.” It is so called because it has, well, a blue slide. A big blue slide, to be precise. I spent many, many, days going down this slide as a kid. In fact, I probably have gone down this slide more times in my life than days I’ve been alive. We would go down in every direction, with cardboard or wax paper under our butt, knees, back, to make us go faster. Every time Alex and I go there I wax nostalgic for those times as I see the scattered cardboard boxes all over the place.

When we went to this park the other day, Alex and I went down the big blue slide together a few times. As long as I am holding on tight (and I mean tight! Kid will yell at me if I don’t have both arms wrapped snuggly around him) he has a great time feeling the air rush by him on our way down. But this day? This day he decided he would try it for himself.

He walked up and up.

And then he stopped, came back down most of the way and decided that close-to-the-bottom was the best place to start his sliding:

One day he’ll go down that slide, all by himself, on cardboard. But until that day I’m happy to see him making progress, and even happier to see that he is still a very cautious child.