Don't Be an Idiot and Ruin Everyone's Fun

When we lived in Newmarket, England, there was a small wooded area that crossed through the housing development.  A fairly wide ditch ran the expanse and beyond.  There was one local road that passed over it, along with two footbridges.  Beyond the subdivision to the west, it ran under the motorway and along miles of farmers’ fields.

Will and I (and a few others, namely Marc, Gary, and Greg) explored its depths quite extensively.  Besides stinging nettles, insects, and an occasional hedgehog, the ditch mostly contained vast amounts of litter: glass bottles, plastic wrappers of all sorts, waterlogged magazines, cigarette butts, and even an old mattress or two scattered among the old tires.  Every once in a while you could tell a vagrant had temporarily set up camp.  There wasn’t really too much to do once you finished your homework out there unless you convinced a parent to drive you somewhere.

One day, as we were chomping Walker’s salt and vinegar crisps and slurping Ice Cream jawbreakers, one of us—I don’t remember who originally had the idea—thought it would be a cool to rig up a rope swing across the gorge.  That way we didn't have to worry about a certain group of skinhead-sympathizing punks who liked to cluster on the bridge closest to the shops to smoke, intimidate little kids, and generally waste daylight.

Somebody’s dad (not mine) found us some thick, hefty rope.  Someone else (not me) shimmied up the tree to attach it to a significantly sturdy branch.  However, before I could try it. Somebody’s mom (probably mine) called for dinner.  In my mind only Marc and Gary were able to monkey around before we separated for the night.  They made it back and forth several times with ease.

While we were away, one of the younger neighborhood brats decided he would test drive our swing.  Only when he was somewhere over the ten or twelve foot gap, he let go.  We found out after he showed up to the bus stop the next morning with a broken arm that he thought the ground would be soft.  Idiot!

The rainy British weather didn't permit us to test the swing that afternoon or the day after or the day after that.  And so the rope swing was somewhat forgotten as we moved on to other activity and interests.  That is, until we saw that same kid the next day with another cast on his other arm, accompanied by his mother.  In short, she phoned the police about the “hazardous rope swing that could get somebody killed that only juvenile delinquents would even dream of putting in a place where children could get hurt.”

So we took it down, nobody daring to mention out loud that only idiots let go of the rope when they are over the ditch.