Warning!! Playground Swing Seat

Playground Swing Seat (Larger Image)
Posted to Flickr by samplereality.

There’s a playground around the corner in my subdivision, and it’s loaded with warning signs. There’s even one on the toddler swing seat, alerting all who read that “improper installation, maintenance, use, or vandalism can damage seat and lead to serious injury.”

What I find intriguing about this sensible sign is that it speaks to all sorts of people at once: the workers who installed the swing, the crews who maintain the parks, the parents and children who use the swings, and the teen pranksters who vandalize such parks. All are addressed in a single, leveling sentence. And it’s punctuated, without a trace of irony, with the phrase “Made in the U.S.A.”

So, “serious injury”–especially to a child on a seemingly harmless swing–that ranks high on the Deadly Suburban Danger Sign Scale, maybe all the up to Code Orange.

As an added bonus, I’ve geotagged this sign: N 35° 29.42390′ W 80° 49.60180′

Update: Looking back at the photograph of the swing seat, I realize that it looks awfully a lot like a pair of worn, dirty, stiff underwear. I guess that adds a whole other dimension to the warning on the swing.