Sometimes your kids take a cautionary tale as an questionable opportunity.

When I was about eight – old enough for my front teeth to be permanent – my mom sent me off to the park for the first time without her. I was with our next door neighbor, who was a few years older than me. He was supposed to be the responsible one.

I was quite fond of hanging upside down from various items of playground equipment, including things that probably shouldn’t have been hung upside down from. Including the bars on the infamous merry-go-round.

As I hung upside down – I don’t know if it was on purpose or an accident – my oh-so-responsible neighbor decided to run up and spin the merry-go-round with all his might. Thrown off balance, I tumbled off, heading straight down into the metal base. I whacked my mouth into the metal, snapping one of my two front teeth. My mouth rapidly filling with blood, I started wailing.

I don’t have a memory of the actual incident, just of sitting on the curb two blocks away – I must have walked there in an attempt to walk home – and crying my eyes out. As this was before cell phones were common, someone must have ran to my parents’ house to tell them to pick me up.

When my parents picked me up, my mom says she remembers thinking, “My baby has a fang!” An emergency trip to the dentist later, I had a cap on my tooth, which I still have to this day.

I’ve told my kids this story several times in an attempt to communicate why being careful on playground equipment is at least moderately important. And because it’s an amusing childhood anecdote. My kids have taken to calling the merry-go-round the “spinning wheel of death.”

So when we visited my hometown last week and drove by that infamous playground, I fully expected that piece of equipment to be gone. The playground had to have been updated in the last 30+ years, right? Apparently not. The wheel of death was right there, in all its dangerous glory. It looked like the only change was a fresh coat of green paint.

So of course my younger son said, “I want to go on the Spinning Wheel of Death!” Who wouldn’t after all that build-up? I think he also liked connecting with this place that played such a large role in my childhood. It was certainly a lot easier to interact with than my old house, which we had driven by earlier like creepsters.

With much sighing and hemming and hawing, I let him do it – as long as he didn’t hang upside down. We spun him around many times and both agreed that it was much faster than the similar but updated one at our playground at home.

We then strolled through the pine tree lined path through the woods that I took to walk to the playground, holding hands. What had been a story of what to avoid had turned into a moment of connection.