Playground days beckon with lessons for lifetime

Because I Said So column for The Commercial Appeal

Sept. 30, 2010

I told myself I was not going to write about the weather.

Weather is the white noise of conversation, the safety net of small talk. “How’s the weather?” “Nice weather today.” “Too hot.” “Too cold.”

No one even hears it. Sorry, Ron Childers.

Yet here I sit with windows flung wide and the slightest crispness in the air and can think of nothing else. Fall has arrived.

To mark the occasion, we stepped outside over the weekend like a family of jittery, suspicious groundhogs. We first broached the front stoop, eventually making our way into the yard. It was not 100 degrees. Not even close.

We walked the short distance to the park in our East Memphis neighborhood, where we found a dozen other groundhogs, all sliding and swinging, running and laughing. There was a group of kids tearing around playing Star Wars. This is not a playground far, far away, but only a couple of blocks from our house, yet it could have been a playground more than 30 years previous, when it would have been me running from Darth Vader and his Imperial Stormtroopers … (read more)