The First Jungle Gym

Briar learns about the story of the jungle gym!

Welcome to Briar’s daily journal. This is where Briar writes about everything she learns daily, mostly for her own personal record. Never stop learning ♥

04/10/2025

I know an old lady who also happens to be one of my coworkers. I met her before I knew we worked at the same place XD. Anyway, she started beekeeping the year after I did, and most of our conversations center around bees. Now we’re friends, and kindred spirits!

I was given such a good boost to get my footing for keeping bees, and she never really had anyone come alongside her to show her what to do. I asked if she’d be interested in me coming out sometime, and chatting about honeybees(which I’m always happy to do).

She seemed enthusiastic about the idea, and I’m excited about it! This is what I love, and this is what I want to do: teach and encourage people to grow food!

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Okay, so not everyone appreciates my interests like the above coworker🤣.

The following might be my favorite customer interaction ever. I’ve been laughing about it all day long:

A grandma, her daughter, and her granddaughter were buying all sorts of things.

The little girl(4 or 5ish) ran up to her mom with a piece of candy and a toy and begged her mom to purchase it.

Like a good parent, the mom gently told her no.

Like a good grandma, she offered to purchase the items instead XD.

“Okay, if I buy these for you you’re going to have to be a good girl the rest of the day. Or, I could just give you some of these instead.”

The mom glanced over, “What?”

“The mealworms for the birds.” The grandma said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

(This is where I come in)

“You know, I’ve eaten mealworms before. They aren’t all that bad.”

The look of pure shock and disbelief on that poor lady’s face🤣.

“Wh-what?”

“Well, I used to raise them, and one day I was cooking some up for my chickens. I figured since people eat them in other countries, it couldn’t be all that bad, so I tried it. They were pretty good.”

The nervous chuckle that ensued🤣.

“Oh! Well, bless your heart!”

I’ve never had the phrase, “bless your heart,” said to my face before, and it was absolutely divine. I was laughing so hard! XD

This is what I get for trying to make small talk. It just isn’t in my DNA😆.

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During my lunch break, a few coworkers were talking about “the good ‘ol days.” While they were talking about ancient things like station wagons, they mentioned something that brought up a good memory.

Jump seats.

I distinctly remember this one time when I was a kid and got to sit in a jump seat between the driver and passenger seats, and it was the best experience in the world.

A jump seat is just a foldable seat if another spot to sit is needed. They look sorta like this:

Anyway, I forgot about that and now I remembered, so I figured I’d share.

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This last one is really cool.

Somebody had to invent the jungle gym, right? Well, it’s quite the story!

Charles Hinton was obsessed with the fourth dimension. He was struggling to teach children about what the fourth dimension was because they weren’t able to grasp the concept. He developed a theory that it was because young children were never properly exposed to the third dimension and therefore couldn’t understand the fourth.

In order to teach the third dimension Charles constructed a structure made of bamboo cubes. He labeled several coordinates on the structure, and he created a game. He would shout out a coordinate, and the first kid to make it to the point would win.

Long story short, the kids were more interested in swinging and climbing than understanding the fourth dimension.

Charles Hinton’s son, Sebastian Hinton, was one of the kids who were a part of the above games. When he grew up(the 1920s) and became a patent lawyer, he remembered climbing on the bamboo structure and how much fun he had.

Around this time, schools were looking to increase certain educational endeavors and branch out to teaching kids healthy activities. Sebastian shared the idea of creating a similar structure like the one he played on as a kid and everyone loved the idea!

To summarize. The jungle gym became patented; the original is now a historic artifact, and kids to this day play on jungle gyms.

Look at how crazy the original looks, though! I wonder how many injuries this thing caused🤣.

-Briar Albaugh