WHY I HATE THE PARK

I never really did the park until I had kids because where I grew up our whole town was a park. I lived in a wooded suburb of Boston where we had huge backyards and pastures and aqueducts. And everyone had a swing set and a sandbox so taking your kid to the actual park was considered suspect behavior. But Los Angeles is a city and in the neighborhood where I live no one has a backyard or a front yard for that matter. We don’t even have sidewalks on my street. So if I want the kids to get some fresh air we have to go out and find some. I actually live less than a mile from Griffith Park, which is one of the largest urban parks in North America and there’s a million things to do there, but they’re all outdoors, which is the first reason I don’t like parks.

I’m not a fan of the great outdoors. Mostly because I don’t like nature. Never have. Hated school nature walks, hated summer camp and I even managed to never take biology in high school or college. As Woody Allen once said, “I’m two with nature.” There’s just something about hanging out in the blistering sun all day with all the ants and bees and screaming kids that doesn’t really appeal to me. And it could also have something to do with the fact that I was attacked by a squirrel as a kid. But that’s another story.

When I first started taking Arden to the park she would just take off the second we arrived. By the time I popped a straw her juice box she was already a half a football field away. The only way to keep her near me was to let her play on the jungle gym or as I like to call it “the death trap.” I don’t know if this is just an L.A. thing, but all the jungle gyms here are friggin’ six feet off the ground. And have no guardrails. Little kids can just walk right off. And they do. I’ve seen it happen. So when Arden was a no-fear toddler, I would work up a sweat just trying to make sure she didn’t fall off the damn thing. And the adolescent emo kids with their skateboards barreling past her didn’t help my cause much.

There’s also a fifty-fifty chance Arden will get sick when I take her to the park because the park is where parents and nannies take kids when they’re too sick to go to school, but don’t want them cooped up in the house all day. There’s always a few snot-nosed kids running around. And of course my kid will undoubtedly want to play with the sick ones. New York City shouldn’t be closing schools in their quest to curb the Swing Flu, they should be closing the parks.

But the main reason I hate going to the park is the preparation. You go for what, an hour, maybe two, but unlike an afternoon of skee ball and cardboard pizza at Chuck E. Cheese, you have to bring water, snacks, blankets and specialized toys like pails and Dora the Explorer scooters and helmets for the bikes. And my kids are fair skinned so that means a repeated dousing of suntan lotion every hour or so. And then there’s the clean up. The minute you decided to bring the kids to the park is the same minute you decided you’re giving your kids a bath that night. If they’re not covered in suntan lotion like my kids, they’re covered in dirt and sweat and that unwanted gift that keeps on giving – sand. It gets in their shoes, the car and stuck in between every crevice on their bodies.

Taking the kids to the park is always a last resort for me. If I can’t get Jen to help me break up the day with a family lunch date I’m constantly thinking up new things to do with the girls. One day we’ll hit a movie, the next a museum, and the day after that a drop-in art class. Ironically my aversion to the park has turned me into the dad of a million ideas. And I’m probably doing my girls’ little lungs a favor by keeping them out of the fresh smoggy L.A. air. :)


Photo: Alex's first visit to the park last week.