People are selfish, shameless and free-riders.. and other lessons from a playground. :-)

Almost every weekend I end up at a playground in a park near where I live. It's a really nice playground in a really nice neighborhood, with really nice kids. A lot of their parents though, are terrible people.... which probably means many of these nice kids will grow up to be at least somewhat terrible people as well.

Yeah... I'm having that kind of day. :-)

There are days when I think people are amazing - kind, generous, compassionate and civilized enough to take care of each other or at least not hurt each other. And then there are days when I'm reminded how we're ultimately just animals - barely evolved enough to not try to take advantage of each other in every way possible.

So back to this playground, where humanity comes every weekend and continues to disappoint me. I should mention I love this playground. I take my kid there every weekend, and there's nothing I enjoy more than watching all kids and families hang out. Kids that are joyful often bring out the best qualities in adults, so it really lifts my mood being there. 

The playground has one of these things to the left.

Simple enough - some kids climb up on the ropes, others just sit on the disc at the bottom, some older kids generally try to spin the whole thing around and there's tons of excitement and joy to be shared. The system takes care of itself - kids know when to get on, when to jump off. They slow down when a kid cries and often stop when they see a little one trying to jump on. It holds a lot of kids - I've seen upto 10-15 hang out on it just fine.

Every time I see a bunch of tweens run the operation, it warms my heart that the planet is in good hands. They don't just have fun, they seem to watch out for each other and the younger kids.

...and now we get to the parents.

Often there's a lot of kids and so you need an adult to help out with getting the thing to spin, or getting a kid in or out, or something else and here's where you get to see people's baser instincts.

A little free-riding is fine, but help out once in a while!: I've seen this happen a few times now but it continues to surprise me. On the first day my son discovered this thing, he really wanted to hang out on this thing. He was there about 20 mins, which meant I was there pushing the thing for most of those 20 mins. Here's the thing - there were very few bigger kids that day which meant parents had to do all the pushing. Over the 20 mins, about 50 kids must have showed up. All their parents were nearby - just 2 other parents over that span of time helped out.. and one of them was a very pregnant woman!

All the other parents were around - sipping their lattes, chatting with their friends, staring at their phones, occasionally shouting at their kids so that they could take a quick photograph - literally everything but helping out with pushing their own kids and all the others. At about ten minutes in, when I was the only parent there, I thought it was time to run an experiment - I stopped pushing and stepped back a bit. Two nine-ish year old girls got down and started to push. One even shouted "Mom, come help me!" Her mom literally looked the other way. I shook my head and helped her, and she jumped back on.

My 4yo seems to care more about the swings and slides these days, so I don't spend as much time on that every week, but the behavior is pretty consistent. There's generally a parent or two that jump in (generally their kids are amongst the youngest) and everyone else sips their damn coffee.

At least have the decency to pretend to help out! That happens once in a while, and I find it pretty amusing - the parent that comes in and gives one push and then steps back fast. But it's better than nothing!

Bend the world for my kid; screw the others: And it gets better. It's bad enough that a lot of parents don't feel the need to help. But a bunch feel like when they are parenting, the rest of the world doesn't matter.

Last week a couple of kids climbed to the top of that thing. Their parents decided it wasn't safe for the thing to spin while those kids (pretty grown up by the way) were standing at the top. Now that is reasonable - every parent has their own ideas of what's safe. So one of the parents held the thing still while these kids climbed up. Here's the problem - three younger kids got in wanting the thing to spin. The parents just ignored the kids. My son jumped in too. I waited for a few seconds, and then told him a little loudly "Hold on. The spinning will start soon." This was a cue for a parents to start a negotiation with their kids about coming down or sitting. There was no urgency or acknowledgement of the fact that a bunch of people were waiting. They continued their practiced, calm "watch-what-a-great-parent-I-am" tone. A little girl lost it, and said "I'm going to spin it now" and started to try turning this thing. This dad deliberately held the rope making it harder for her to turn it. "Don't worry - I'm controlling it", he smugly announced to his wife.

Eventually the kids got down and sat on the disc. Two other older girls jumped on started spinning the disc. I helped out until my son was done with the thing. The dad that stopped everyone else having fun so his sone could climb down? He was sipping his damn latte with a smug look on his face while his son sat on the disc.

When I think about society and how messed up it is, I now often think about these parents in the playground. If we can't do the right thing trying to take care of each others kids, what chance do we ever have of doing the right thing at all?