I wanna go throw rocks down!

We live across the street from a school, and sometimes we use the school grounds as our backyard. We've set up a grill and had lots of picnics on the grass. We splash in the puddles on the pavement. When the boys are just crazy and dinner won't be ready for 30 minutes, the school is our "go to" place to go. We jump from stone to stone along the path around the building. Jett rides his bike and his scooter in the big open expanse of concrete. Or he does his favorite thing: "throw rocks down".

The school has these huge metal grates in the ground. I'd say they are 12 feet by 12 feet. You can stand on top of them and look down about 20 feet to the ground. They are connected to the school and big garage-like doors open in to them way below. Charlie thinks they have something to do with the air conditioning system in the building. Suffice it to say that if you are one of those people who are afraid to walk over grates in the sidewalk, then this activity is not for you, as these grates are huge and high, and generally scary. If you are a mother of a son who likes to walk on them they are horrifying.

But he does like to walk on them and we let him. (Note: Charlie is to blame. I never would have let him walk on those grates. I check them out first every time we walk over there). We also let him pick up rocks from the sidewalk around the grates, even though we have to watch closely to make sure he doesn't pick up cigarette butts or broken glass or bits of trash.(I swear we don't live in the ghetto, it only sounds like it - stupid high schoolers and their littering ways. Again, I would have walked Jett over to the cleaner sidewalks, or the grass, to collect rocks. Charlie is a daredevil).

So Jett gathers up the rocks and throws them down the grates. Lately most of his rocks have actually been bits of pavement that he pulls up from the sidewalk. The sidewalk is cracked and broken in some places, (and I wonder how responsible we are for it). But the chunks of concrete are perfect for Jett's job. He's getting good at recognizing which ones are too big to fit through the grate before he even tries to throw them. The big ones smack and the little ones ping and the tiniest ones we can't hear at all. Sometimes Jett and Charlie even hit their targets (crushed soda cans, puddles, other rocks 20 feet below). Now Kai does it too, although I keep him in the stroller and hand him the rocks to throw from there.

I'm not sure what is so alluring about throwing rocks down the grate, except that it is orderly (to line up the rocks before throwing them) and satisfying (smack, smack, ping!) and thrilling to walk 20 feet above the ground. Still, I shudder.