When was the last time you jumped out of a swing?

This morning I came across a Flickr group of people leaping out of swings. As I flipped through the photos in the group (and tut-tutted at the photos that were obviously not swing jumping related) I remembered how much fun it is to launch yourself into the air from a swing.

When I was in elementary school I can remember being a good swing jumper was a badge of honor. Jumping from a swing asserted that you were a kid of action and adventure. Swings were not just for swinging; they were for launching imaginative flights across the universe.

I wasn't bad at swing jumping, but certainly not the best in my age group. The more athletic and daring kids were able to jump much higher than I did. I usually liked to try for the longest distance and not the highest height. Still, I can remember the rush of air as you disentangled from the chains and flung yourself free of the seat as if the last time I jumped from a swing was yesterday.

There was a certain mental process that I had to go through in preparing for the jump. You can just decide to jump in the middle of a swing, you have to get ready for it. First off, you have to make sure that you're not going to leap into someone because you might get hurt. In elementary school this was a challenge because the playground swing set consisted of eight swings all hung from bars in the shape of a large octagon, and we all swung inward.

Once your flight path was cleared there were some body contortions to attend to. You had to move your elbows so that they were inside the chains. Most of the time when you're swinging your elbows are outside the chains to give you more power in your swings, but in order to leap you need those elbows in to clear the chains, otherwise you're not jumping off the swing; you're falling out of it.

The most important part of the jump was timing the release. As I mentioned above, I liked to go for length of the jump and not height. To assure that your jump is going to cover a lot of distance you have to let go of the swing while you're moving forward more than moving up. Somewhere around a 40° chain angle is about optimum, but it is hardly a precise sport. If height is what you want then you should release before the peak of your swing.

I don't know if Colin jumps from swings. As his school is brand new and needing playground equipment I don't even know if he gets to swing at school. I can't imagine elementary school without swings.

There is so much that my son has in his life that I didn't at his age, and there are many things that I did at his age that I can't see him doing now. This is partially a generational gap of nearly thirty years and partially because there are many different activities that are available to Colin. Swings just can't compete with Nintendo DS and Wii or even the computer itself.

But that isn't the only reason that Colin doesn't have as much swing time as I did. We live in a culture of fear and parents these days are told that the most dangerous thing on a playground is the predator waiting to snatch your child. It is this fear that drives parents to put limits on what their children can do. The Daily Mail ran an article talking about how children's roaming limits have decreased to almost nothing in just four generations.

When I was Colin's age my mother wouldn't think twice about letting me tear off the driveway on my bike to who knows where. I don't recall having a time to come home either. Returning home wasn't something I did until I was hungry. Only on occasion would my parent's look for me. My bike offered me miles of places to go to and I was always happy to hop on and take off.

The rent house has a neighborhood very similar to the one I grew up in and one thing that I want to instill in Colin is the joy of exploring. He's a smart kid and I'm sure that if he runs into trouble that he will be able to find his way out of it. After all, he's my son and when I think of all the scrapes I got into as a kid I can't imagine Colin doing anything more dangerous.