Under the Sun
Little triangle park
resolutely serves
a neighborhoodTRIANGLE park is what I've always called the small plot of grass down the road, although whether that's an official name or merely a description of its shape, I don't really know. It has no sign that identifies it and on maps, when it is noted at all, bears the generic label "park."
When we were kids, we'd play there once in awhile. More often, though, we'd traipse down the avenue to the larger park on the main drag through Kaimuki town where the swings were bigger and got you higher in the sky with each pull and pump. But the triangle was nice to have, a just-in-case place to while away the time.
Weedy grass circled a weak, mossy water fountain and a few, old graceful trees shaded splintered benches. A buss-up asphalt basketball court was bracketed by backboards of flaking paint and rusty rims. An old-fashioned slide board -- the metal kind that the sun heated to scorch okoles and bare legs -- shared space with monkey bars and a rubber tire roped so low it barely cleared the gravel beneath. The weathered rubbish barrels were usually emptied and the grass mowed and watered, but it didn't seem to be at the top of the priority list for the city.
Then the park began to get more attention. First came new benches and trash cans. Another tree was planted, and the cracked courts were dug up and smooth blacktop was installed.
I took the improvements as a sign that the old swing and monkeybars would soon be replaced. At the time, my mother was babysitting her youngest grandson while his parents worked. She doesn't drive and pushing a baby carriage to Kaimuki was a trek for grandma and toddler. If there was new equipment, the triangle would be a great convenience.
We waited and waited, but several years passed before the bright blue-yellow-orange gear finally appeared. By then, my nephew was in kindergarten, but I was glad that other neighborhood kids would get to slither down the corkscrew slide.
A few weeks after the new stuff was put in, my mother reported that someone had already vandalized the place. Graffiti had been sprayed across the colorful plastic and someone had tried to set fire to the squishy pads that protect kids should they fall.
Makes me wonder. Why would anyone take the time to mess up something that belongs to them, to all of us? What runs through the mind of the miscreant soul who derives pleasure in damaging things? I can only guess that their lives are so full of hurt that they believe carving into a slide delivers reciprocal pain to undefined others or that feeling powerless in a society that absorbs the individual, they are compelled to mark their presence.
Or maybe they don't think at all. Their brains deep-fried on drugs or drink leave them unable to sense the harm in cutting down trees in front of a school or smashing a church's statue. They may be grabbing for a cheap dollar, like the fools who let loose veiled chameleons on Maui so as to breed them in large quantities for sale. They don't see beyond their avarice to the destruction the lizards can inflict on native animals.
Makes me sad. But then I remember that most people respect themselves and others -- at least most of the time.
Last Saturday, the park was alive with kids, shrieking in that pitch unachievable after a certain age as they jostled for the slide. Teenage boys in sweaty tank tops bumped and dribbled down the lane, heaving lay-ups and bawling at misses. An elderly man, unfazed by the ruckus, lifted his arms and pushed at the air, serene in tai chi movements. The triangle, small and unnamed, endures.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin for 25 years.
She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.