As a child, my friends and I played in the woods, and we often found things like old tires, rusted scrap metal, and broken glass bottles. It was fun playing with these objects, further damaging them in order to create something totally new. My friends and I always had fun; however, our play was often disrupted and limited. When a few kids argued whether or not a tire should be further ripped up, people’s feelings got hurt. Some kids fought verbally or physically, causing someone to run home crying. On other days it wasn’t rare for our play to stop due to an injury.

I agree in thinking that play can be dangerous, although I don't think we should be pitting kids against each other on the playground. Rather, we could look at the limitations of danger on a usual playground setting. In contrast to the dilapidated ruin, modern playgrounds have undergone a transformation to a cushier landscape. Blacktop is replaced by woodchips is replaced by old ripped up tires. When I visited my old elementary school, I discovered that the school completely got rid of the see-saws—probably because, you guessed it, a kid got hurt.

Although I agree with your comment that the children of the 21st century are restricting themselves from physically playing, I would like to bring up the matter of whether or not our surroundings truely affect our ability to play. There have been many a rainy day which I spent, as a child, acting out scenarios in my head: the filling between each tile on the wall or the bathroom floor would be a maze which I had to escape to go on and climb the side of the sink.

I think play is something that should be limitless, but practically, it cannot be. There must be some boundries that parents must put in order to prevent terrible accidents. For example, in the New York Times article Taking Play Seriously, the author says, "One of the strkest measurements of the risk of play was made by Robert Harcourt...who spent nine months in 1988 observing seal pups off the coast of Peru.

Undeniably, like all the passages we have read mentioned, play can help develop social skills, explore imagination and have so many other benefits. However, at the same time, play is also riskful and limited.