Scenes, Set in Cleveland, Without Much Else in Common: One

I. Coventry School Playground.

We go to the playground because I'm mad. This time, specifically, I'm angry because he sat and read TIME magazine instead of talking to or looking at me when I came over. When I leave, he runs after me and suggests the playground as a peacemaking move, knowing full well that I have a weakness for swingsets and other childish things.

There are, not many, but a few kids playing--young ones, ranging from 2-5ish, with a parent apiece--and I notice how this makes us act: like adults clearly infringing upon their territory. We watch a man teach a couple kids how to play lacrosse. It would be endearing if I liked lacrosse.

But we do the things one is supposed to on the playground. We ramble through the fortress. I climb a turret and realize that although climbing has made me very, very good at getting up things, I am rather used to having someone gently lower me down instead of climbing down myself. Once upon a time I would have viewed this as a sign about my life, but now I just laugh. We go down the slide. He makes fun of me for keeping my feet down so I don't go too fast. We jump on balance beams, we climb tires, we dangle from ropes and yes, we swing.

I love swings. While we swing, he talks about how we could calculate what velocity it would take to catapault us over the beam, or how to make the tire swing go completely horizontal. He loves to talk about things like this, and I can never tell if he's doing it because I like physics or because he genuinely gets a kick out of it.

The man teaching the kids to play lacrosse packs up his equipment. There is a lot of it, and he stows it in a child's trailer attached to the back of his bike. While he does this, he hums or sings and talks to himself, and I wonder without malice if he is perhaps retarded.

We go on the zip line. He has trouble with his stupid long legs. I am still a little angry at him but he's made me laugh and we both know once I laugh and start to make jokes it's all over, no matter how mad I still want to be.

Suddenly there are swarms of kids on the grounds where before there were few. Most of them are holding balloons and I deduce--feeling brilliant--that it is kindergarten graduation night. Predictably, a few new graduates let theirs go and whine about it. I stand and watch the first released balloon until I can no longer see it, listening as a father tells his daughter that eventually the air pressure will decrease so much that the balloon will pop. She is all of two and his earnestness makes me smile. About 500 feet up into the atmosphere my boyfriend comes and puts his arms around me and we watch the balloons together. When the balloons are gone, so are the newly-minted first graders and their parents.

We swing on the ropes some more. The man playing lacrosse pulls his bike up and tells us that people look at him like he's crazy for storing stuff in the kiddie ride-a-long thing. We make small talk and he shows us his club arm and hand. I immediately feel like a terrible human being. Instead of making amends to mankind for all the wrongs I have vested upon them, I climb up a rope and am pleased with my arm strength.

While we're standing on some tires watching the sun set, the teenagers come out. Maybe seven or so, dressed in varying degrees of goth wanna-be. They take no notice of us and two peel off to run up the slide, and presumably make out or whatever those thirteen year olds do these days, one to pout in the fortress, and four on the swings, two girls apiece per swing, the lone white chick straddling her friend as they tilt back and forth, grinding their pelvises together.

Of course we messed up the timing. College kid time on the playground is after dark. Closer to midnight. When you can stand on the tire swing and move it using only your weight. When everything is funnier because you're just having fun, you're not out of your element, in the dark we're all kids again. Playing new games or the same old ones.