A Boy in a Tight Place

We went to Charles Park for a lunch time picnic today. It looked sort of overcast this morning, but, by noon the weather was sunny and pleasant. We were lucky to find a vacant table, and everyone except for K. sat down and enjoyed a good lunch. K. kept coming to the table, grabbing a handful of grapes, and going back to play on the slides.
After lunch, we went for a little walk around the park, and then sat around watching the kids make sand angels and play on the slides and swings. The park has one set of "baby" swings, and one set of "big kid" swings, and T. took a notion to swing in the baby swings. He took his shoes off in order to get his feet through the openings, and persuaded his sister to push him. After a minute or two, he decided that he'd had enough and wanted to get out. He tried pulling himself up on the chains, but his arms weren't strong enough. His little sister tried pushing his feet up, from underneath, but she wasn't strong enough. A couple other kids came over to watch. My parents and I had been observing his efforts with great interest (Ed had wearied and gone to sit in the van). Eventually, he called for me to pull him out, but I wasn't going to put out my still-recovering back, and so my mom went over. Her back isn't up to lifting a large seven year old either, but she tried to help him pull up. I went to see if maybe the two of us could get him out, and, after studying the situation, we decided that the best course was to Turn the swing Upside Down, thus emptying it of my foolish boy. It worked beautifully, and he landed with a resounding "thump" on the thick sand underneath. Sadly, I was laughing too hard at that point to get a picture, but even T. agreed that it was pretty comical.