Just a Playset

It was a playset in the clearing in the woods by the creek.

A swingset. A rainbow roof. A small sandbox area on the lower level.
You could climb the wooden ladder to get upstairs, or you could climb the rope ladder. If you were particularly daring, you could try climbing up the knotted, black rope to get up there.

That's all it was. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a playset.
Unless you knew how to look at it.

It was also a time machine, the knots in the wood were out dials and buttons. The woods around us-the untravelled land of the dinosaurs.

It was a pirate ship. You could climb up the rope ladder to the crows nest on the rainbow-flagged roof and look out over the creek that was as vast as the seven seas.

It was a spaceship. You could look out at the endless, dark space all around through the gaps in the wood planks that were our shuttles windows. You could walk off the shuttle, down the steps and be the first person ever on an uncharted forest planet. Occasionally, our shuttle would lose power and we would have to escape in the escape pod-swings.

The lower level sandbox wasn't merely a sandbox...it was a battle torn desert in the war between the green and tan plastic armies.

The swings were our fighter planes. If the enemy pilots ever shot one of us down, we would eject and land hard in the thick of battle in the enemy jungles.

The playset can take you to other worlds, and it can also turn you into other people. Some days, it would turn you into a Power Ranger; the next you were Spider-man or one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Yeah, it was just a playset in the clearing in the woods by the creek. But it was also so much more.