Poised to Play and Nowhere to Go

You know what is within walking distance from my house? At least two pharmacies, five private schools, multiple hair salons, a dry cleaners, three dress shops, a place to buy DVD's, and more corner stores, fruit and vegetable stands and cafes than I can count.

You know what is NOT within walking distance from my house (at least not any distance that I want to walk on a daily basis)? A playground.

Any of you with small children and not a lot of outdoor green space know how much that can suck. And believe me, it sucks.

Not that there is no outdoor space near our home, there is. Right outside our door, in the middle of our neighborhood there is a large concrete area where kids play (endless) games of soccer and classic games like tag and cash cash (also know as hide and seek). When I engage my kids in these activities and round up the neighborhood kids as well, then my two get a lot of valuable play time and exercise. But man do I wish that area was grassed in with a playground on top. I don't think anything would make me happier at this point.

There is a play-area type facility, pretty big too, right behind the local Wal-Mart-type store that is about a 20-minute walk from the house. The problem is that I don't want to make that walk each day with kids (you may have read one of my previous posts expelling the joys [NOT] of taking walks with my kids), and I don't want to pay the fee for the kids to play.

Yeah you heard that right. You have to pay to get into the playgrounds around here.

Say wha????????

Yeah, I had the same reaction. But it is what it is and so there it is. I took my kids to a local indoor/outdoor play spot over the holidays and, though the place was great, you had to pay for each of the different play areas and there were time limits.

Don't these peeps know I want to plant my kids in their play area and let them run wild while I ignore them and read a book, or is that just an American thing?

In all fairness Marrakesh can boast of having these gas stations that have morphed into restaurants with outdoor playgrounds attached. These are free but the closest one to me is an hour walk away and there's no bus to take me there, only my two feet. Doesn't sound too free to me

Anyway, in the spirit of feeding Marrakesh's playground industry, I will be taking the dreaded 20-minute walk to the pay-for-play playground tomorrow and letting my kids loose. And there better not be a time limit.