SO WHO DOESN'T LIKE TO SWING?

I spent a lot of youth time on a swing set. I loved to swing so high that the support poles came out of the ground and threatened to tip over. Climbing on the swing set was good, too. And the slide. But nothing could compare to the swing.

My Dad hung a big door between two trees and we ...nevermind. That was my wife's dad. I always tell that story like it was mine. At least around my sister-in-law. It's kinda like an inside family joke. But it must have been huge and supported with big springs. It held at least three girls and maybe more. They would stand up on it, eat lunch on it, and play all day under the Waltonville or Rend City sun.

I liked to walk on the little beach at Jaycee Lake when I was in high school. They also had some big industrial type swings at the lake. You couldn't tip those and they would swing really high. Or, they were just fun for swinging a girl and talking. Making plans or just being together. Even though there wasn't a whole lot to do in our town, the swings and lake were always good places to take a date.

I had a picture that I used when I taught a creative writing section in a course entitled Basic Comp back in the 70's. Students chose pictures from a box and had to create a scene or story in relation to the picture they drew out of the box. One of my favorites was an elderly man swinging his elderly wife. Their expressions were ones of pleasure. That's what swinging always did for me.

Somehow you could do some good thinking on a swing. Or dump a bad mood. Or just get away by yourself. But most people don't feel the freedom to do that on their own when they get past a certain age. Maybe Frost said it best, if I mis-paraphrase him somewhat from his poem entitled "Birches": "one could do worse that being a swinger..."