St. Mary’s Playground on Smith Street, the most desolate of playgrounds
- Neither of you wants to go, but you have to make the kid do it. There is some cruel irony in that. (And of course, she loves it once there. But you still hate it).
- You feel the chorus of nannies sitting on the benches is constantly judging you for being a helicopter parent, standing two feet away from your kid on the structure. You wish you could wear a pin that says, my kid is uncoordinated and fearless and will certainly break her head if I don’t stand here.
- The worm-infested sandbox.
- People who change their kids’ diapers on the benches, I don’t want to look at your kid’s poopy bottom. I seen enough of my kid’s brown starfish for a lifetime, thanks (just step out of the playground and use the grass, where everything else poops. Not where I want to sit or where I would sit if my kid didn’t have a death wish).
- The sad, seemingly abandoned child wandering around, crying or trapped halfway up a ladder or with one leg on a fire pole and one leg still on the structure while they slowly sink downward, and you are suddenly helping this kid while your kid immediately sprints for the men’s room or some other well hidden spot full of pedophiles. (subset: the mean, bratty slide-hog who has to get schooled by yours truly, aka Mean Mommy).
- The thunder dome imitation that happens on the structure when kids ages 2 through 12 are all playing different games, most of which involve running and some parent decides this is a good time to let their toddler “explore some new terrain and boost her gross motor skills.” Gets out o’ the way baby, otherwise you’re going to play Piggy in this Lord of the Flies “game.” Or just get trampled.
- Inevitably, your shrimp will need to go to the bathroom, despite having JUST peed at the house. Then you have to brave the bathroom, where there may or may not be toilet seats and you may or may not have to hold your kid over the bowl and pray that you both don’t get peed on. (Just count yourself lucky that it’s not a port-a-potty in Washington Square Park, where you have to shout things like “HANDS ON YOUR BELLY. DON’T TOUCH THE WALLS.”)
- Other parents. Sorry, I like you all in the sanctity of our homes or a wine bar without our children. But, when our kids start to play together on the playground, when they really hit it off and are inseparable for an hour, and I am forced to talk to someone that I don’t know, this is an introvert’s worst nightmare. Then there is the question of exchanging numbers. Are our kids supposed to be real friends now? Are we? Oh god, the pressure. Where are my sunglasses, cigarettes and black hair dye when I need them?
- The Bubble Man. I have a love/hate relationship with this guy. First of all, god bless him for seeing a market and tapping it. Second, there is nothing sweeter when two or three kids clamor around him popping bubbles. Third, that is almost never how it goes down. There are usually ten kids, tripping over each other, limbs flailing, trying to get to those bubbles, it quickly degenerates in to a kiddie mosh pit, one that will end with your kid crying both out of pain and out of a desire for a cheap bubble wand. And you don’t make that mistake twice.
- Waiting in line for the swing. This is when I consider moving to North Hampton, MA and making soap.
- Because it is the equivalent of the subway for kids—that dirty, that loud, that bad. Do you ride the subway for fun? Sadly, now that you have kids, you probably do.
Sarah Moriarty is a writer, editor and adjunct professor teaching composition and literature classes at The College of Staten Island. Sarah’s writing has appeared in such hallowed places as her blog, her mother’s email inbox, the backs of Value Pack envelopes and a waist-high stack of mole skin journals. In addition, Sarah has contributed to F’Dinparkslope.com and edited fiction for Lost Magazine. An excerpt from Sarah’s novel, The Rusticators, is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Writers Space 2013/2014 anthology, The Reader. A resident of Brooklyn for the last eleven years, Sarah lives with her husband, daughter and a dwindling population of cats. Check out more of Sarah’s work at sarahmoriarty.com.