When my family and I first moved to North Carolina, just about three years ago, we were fascinated by something that we didn’t have in Illinois: trees.
BIG ONES! Huge, tall trees right there in our back yard! It was like living in a forest. We would wake in the morning and stare out the window, revering of the beauty before us. Moving from the plain, paved jungle of suburban Chicago, this lovely landscape presented a kind of awe which made us certain that we had been blessed by a lifetime of living on vacation. Yes indeed, life felt pretty grand. I knew almost immediately that it was my duty to put these trees to fun use.
I wasn’t alone in this idea. My children asked me to build some sort of tree fort. And as much as I did want to build one, I realized that my Homer Simpson-like skills with woodwork, combined with my miserable collection of power tools, would make for a rather hideous scar on an otherwise lovely back yard.
I had another idea, something my brother-in-law had already done: a cool spinning tire swing.
I just knew this would result in endless fun, laughter, good times and great memories. And it would be cheap, right? Heck, they give old tires away for free at the tire store. I’d just need a few chains, some clips and rope and stuff.
After $100 and 3 trips to Home Depot, phase 1 of the tire swing was built, and I was proud of my work. (I had to purchase the most durable chains, of course, just in case a 500-pound gorilla decided to play on the thing.)
The next step was simple, or so I thought. I merely had to throw the rope 30 feet in the air and loop it around the thick branch I had identified as being the perfect mounting point. Piece of cake, right? It turned out, to my shock, that I didn’t have the hulking strength I had imagined. Somewhere there is a photo that my wife took while I was heaving a rope with a hammer tied to one end in the air, running away, covering my head, as the hammer fell to the ground. I did this repeatedly before accepting the fact that I would have to look for a different approach, lest I bludgeon my skull.
My grand idea? I stood, balancing precariously, atop a 12-foot step ladder. By my calculations, 30 – 12 = 18 feet (I am a mathematical wizard). A much more ‘heavable’ distance. I think I just created that word, heavable. I think you know what I am saying.
Anway, 18 feet: no problem! After a few more attempts, this time standing on top of the wobbling ladder on uneven ground, the rope was in place, and to everyone’s astonishment, including my own, I was alive and well (and quite satisfied with myself.)
After many more hours of frustration and effort, the tire swing was up. I’ve cut out a fair amount of detail here, but we must move forward. My children applauded and my wife was clearly impressed by my newly-discovered machismo. As you can see in the picture, I added some sort of clippy thing to allow the tire to spin. This, I knew, would add a significant amount of fun. What well-rounded American child doesn’t love spinning to the point of puking?
The kids were quick to try it out, as their proud father looked on, arms crossed, chest puffed. “World’s greatest dad,” I told myself, as they spun around and screamed in a drunken state of utter happiness. While the kids played I cleaned my tools up (by cleaning my tools, I mean I threw them into my unorganized toolbox of junk.) From the front of the house I could still hear their delighted cries. Listen to all that fun!
The screams continued…and intensified.
They are having fun, right? Is that a scream of fun or a scream of pain? Are they having SO much fun that they are literally crying? They must be.
When I returned to the backyard I found that the screams were not born of joy: They were born of pain, and some degree of terror. My youngest daughter was on the ground with her legs wedged underneath the contraption. The rope had slid down the branch, and perhaps stretched a bit, and the tire swing was no longer 3 feet above the ground.
No problem! A simple, perhaps anticipatory, glitch in an otherwise flawless design.
Using my sharply honed troubleshooting skills, I realized that the looped section of rope had come to rest in a flat spot on the branch, and it could slip no further. I simply needed to raise the swing higher (see the rope-clippy thingies.) Every great inventor has a few failed beta tests. Unfortunately, the slippage had pushed the tire swing closer to the tree trunk, but I wasn’t about to let something as trivial as tire swing-to-tree proximity spoil the fun. I simply told my perfectly obedient children, “Be very careful not to hit the tree.” I emphasized the word very. Problem solved!
“Are you sure that’s safe?” my wife asked. “Oh yeah, it’s fine, look at how much fun they are having!” And indeed it was fun, even for me. But it wasn’t long before knees, arms and heads made painful contact with the tree. I reiterated the be very careful instructions, knowing that my 5 and 7 year-old children (and all of their friends) would do so.
For the rest of the summer, the tire swing was mostly fun. Once in a while someone would cry (sometimes a neighbor kid.) When this happened I simply restated the rules of tire swing play:
Be very careful.
Winter came and the tire swing was forgotten. The thick twine rope was left in the cold while my family and I huddled inside by the fireplace. I figured the expensive twine rope would last forever, and by spring it appeared just as sturdy as when I first constructed the enormously fun contraption. I even stood on the swing and gave it a few heavy bounces to make sure. One can never be too careful!
Unfortunately, despite my scientific stress test, the rope wasn’t as sturdy as it had been months before. The weather had apparently taken its toll, and as scientific as my jump test was, it failed to predict the looming fate of the rope. One Saturday morning while the kids were playing in the back yard with a few friends, I smiled as I listened to their childish glee and bellows of joy.
I’m not just a great dad, I’m a great neighbor too!
And, once again, the screams of joy morphed into shrieks of pain. I ran to investigate, only to find the neighbor girl on the ground, terrified, with her legs trapped beneath the tire. The rope had snapped somewhere near the top, having been stressed to the point of no return by a 50 pound child. The rope and chains were in a heap on the ground (and thank God none of the heavy stuff landed on the girl’s head.) After a few hugs and the wise instructions to “shake it off,” all was well. All, that is, except for the tire swing.
Throughout the summer the creative children found new uses for the fallen swing. One great game involved placing one child inside while the others rolled it. So I decided to leave the tire swing in the back yard. After all, I worked hard on the expensive contraption. Sure, it looked a little trashy there in the backyard, but anything fun usually involves some sort of mess, right?
This past weekend I mowed the lawn for the first time this year. There, in the backyard, was the tire swing, my former pride and joy, with chains and a long part of rope still attached. It looked pathetic. As I neared it, knowing that I would have to move the thing eventually, I worked the mower around the rope. I’ll get that on the next pass, I told myself.
The lawnmower, however, had a different idea. It grabbed the rope with ferocious speed, tangled it within the blade, and immediately stalled. Frustrated with the non-sentient device, I turned the mower on its side with a swift flip, as if to punish the thing, and untangled the rope.
Working the rope out of the underside of the mower took some time and effort, and a few swear words. While I did this, gasoline spilled out onto the grass. The calming aroma or fumes, while doing wonders to settle my angst, failed alarm me to the fact that gasoline was soaking into my grass. As for the lawnmower blade, it didn’t look very good-not good at all. So I suppose the cost of the swing increased by around $20 (the cost of a new blade). With gas prices, I’ll go ahead and add about $1.00 in lost gas. Grass seed and repair of the lawn—who knows?
Today I have a lovely tire swing doing its part to contribute to the clutter of my garage.
I thought about throwing it away, but I am fairly certain it is against some sort of law to chuck a used tire in the trash (even if it would fit in the trashcan). It turns out, the tire store is happy to give those old tires for free for a darn good reason: It costs a lot to dispose of them.
tl;dr: Anyone want a free tire swing? The chains are really strong.
Tags: classic dad moves, dads, family, how are none of these people dead?, matt rupert, tire swings
Oh man, I love this! (The bits about the neighbor kids reminds me of when MY childhood neighbor was throwing a plastic horseshoe straight into the air when we were outside playing one day. And then the horseshoe hit me in the eye. Neighbors!)
My dad is also a fan of the “shake it off” method of dealing with pain, both mental and physical.
My cousin works as an athletic trainer at a private school in New Jersey. Her preferred response to pain/cuts/bruises is “Rub some dirt on it.”
Hahahaha awesome. My childhood is only spared a similar story due to lack of trees I am sure.
Ha this is hilarious. ‘Are they having SO much fun that they are literally crying?’ My Dad once constructed a climbing frame out of fence stakes and huge steel bolts and every time we climbed it we got ENORMOUS splinters that took days to get out. Even now he buries his head in his hands when it’s mentioned. He was a film critic! He should not have been in charge of construction.
I think that assuming that all dads are Handy Dads is a dangerous thing that we do. (Dads do this too. “I’m a Dad! I can make that/fix that/install my own gas cooktop, as I am a Handy and Inventive Father.”) Recipe for disaster.
I found reading this incredibly stressful. I kept anticipating a tonal shift, thought for sure someone was going to die at the end, and that the story would turn into a Cautionary Tale. I guess I should have known better from The Toast, but still!
I appreciate the “how are none of these people dead” tag.
Someone suffering serious injury before the story’s end is EXACTLY what I would expect from The Toast, personally.
Earlier, as I was sadistically laughing at children’s screams, I foresaw an angry neighbor with an injured child. Towards the end I envisioned at least a grass fire. Looks like things could’ve been much worse. I enjoyed the read. My childhood experience knows that there are some trees (oaks can get kinda big) with tire swings just outside the suburbs of Chicago.
I never even had a potentially lethal tire swung, as no trees overlooked our back garden.
So your kids have had an experience I never have – that of the mingled terror and joy of a dangerous home-made plaything.
My dad was notorious for building a swingset out of 4x12s and a giant-ass (9×9) sandbox at every house we lived in. The topper for the withstand-the-apocalypse swingsets were seats made out of 2x6s, and it was a rite of passage to jump off the swing and not get away fast enough, thus getting clipped on the back of the head by a flying board. I’m amazed any of us are functioning adults after the amount of head trauma we suffered at the hands of those swingsets.
When I was in elementary school I was pushing a kid on the school tire swing. It was a sturdy and well built playground equipment swing. But while I was doing it he chipped one of his permanent front tooth on the chain. I’m not even sure how it happened. I know that it hurt because he was crying. Fortunately, he was able to get it fixed. But now, I always feel badly when I see tire swings.
Slightly related, to make you feel better: my buddy literally poked his brother’s eye out when they were young and now he has to live his life knowing he half-blinded his brother, eesh. Boys…you know?
My boyfriend and his brother used to beat each other with broomsticks. Boys are the WEIRDEST creatures.
Maybe we (males) get our undeserved sense of entitlement from making it out of boyhood alive. The Youngest War is a coming-of-age movie about 2 reckless boys…from the dumb side of the tracks.
Once as a young child my uncle ran backwards into a brick wall, proceeded to get some of the brick STUCK IN HIS BACK and then, so my grandma wouldn’t notice and get mad that he had a piece of brick in his back, had his friend put duct tape over the wound. As this was not a particularly safe or wise medical decision, things eventually went sour and my grandma noticed and took him to the hospital. He still has some of the brick in his back. Boys. Why.
I lost a tooth to a tire swing! My mom freaked out and made me look for it on the ground so a dentist could put it back in (is that a real thing?), but luckily it turned out to be a baby tooth.
Should just do what I did as a kid and use the incredibly dangerous rope swing some unknown party had installed in the woods behind our house, which went about 40ft in the air over a ravine strewn with trash, rusty appliances, and an old car.
Now THAT is living.
How did we not die as kids from gangrene or tetanus.
Did we live in the same rural area? “Here’s a ravine, put a rope over it!”
That’s EVERY rural area. You have to keep the kids entertained until they’re old enough to drink and dive into quarries (circa middle school).
“If you fear it then you’d better put a swing on it.”
I greatly appreciated this, because my dad is aggressively competent and extremely handy and I fail to live up to his example in a major way. If my husband and I ever try to build our daughter a tire swing, I expect it to go exactly like this, except I’m not sure the tire would ever make it off the ground in the first place.
What well-rounded American child doesn’t love spinning to the point of puking?
Well, if they don’t love this they are not American, that’s for dang sure.
Dude. Dude. Oh my god. Dude.
My parents just opted for a rope swing. No heavy chains or tires to fall on you, what could go wrong? Well, after a few years, I guess a widow-maker got stuck in the tree from the neighbouring one and we didn’t notice. My sister was swinging on the swing and knocked it loose onto our little brother. It missed his eye, but 12 years later, he still has a noticeable scar on his cheekbone. My dad brought him home from the hospital, went outside with the axe and chopped down the tree.
That is some serious Dad Vengeance.
This brought back a long buried memory of me waking up when I was like 8 to my mom crying and my dad cussing at one of the 50 foot oak trees in the backyard. It got up eventually, but ours was upright. Once one of the wierdo neighbor kids ended up over the privacy fence in the vacant lot behind our house. Good times.
This would be the perfect article for the next DAD magazine!
Man, my dad’s a woodworker so I had a tire-swing and a two-story fort with a balcony and a basement. Extremely well-constructed, but still managed to hurt ourselves grievously on them on a regular basis. (Maybe our worst decision was when we decided to saw a hole in the floor of the fort to jump to the basement without going outside. Kids are not handydads.)
My woodworker step-dad started to build a fort inside a little pit in our side yard (yeah, I had a pit), but he only built the frame and never finished it–thus preparing me for a lifetime of disappointment. Nah I never minded, I had entire woods to serve as forts and playgrounds. Plus, he did make me a really nice guitar I use to this day, and then there’s the sweet hutch I use too. Never mind, not complaining.
Thanks for the comments everyone! I am honored to have my little story published here! –Matt Rupert http://matthewrupert.net
I’m dying at your New Math post. I know that well from years spent tutoring. Tutoree: “What, you don’t know how to do it?” Me: “No, I know how I do it, I just want to see your notebook so I can see how your teacher does it so I can do it the same way and not confuse you.”
Amazing post.
My dad is excessively handy, so our tire swing had this really complex anchoring system to keep it in the proper place on the branch… We tried SO HARD to hit the tree and I think only managed it once in all our years of tire-swinging.
Thank you!