Oklahoma boys training for rodeo make the New Yorker writer think about "a playground near my house in Brooklyn, in Park Slope."

"A couple of years ago, it was beautifully renovated by the city, with a rock-lined stream meandering through it and an old-fashioned pump that children could crank to set the water flowing. The stream was the delight of the neighborhood for a while, thronged with kids splashing through the shallows and floating sticks down the current. Yet some parents were appalled. The rocks were a menace, they declared. The edges were too sharp, the surfaces too slippery. A child could fall and crack her skull. 'I actually kept tapping them to check if they were really rocks,' one commenter wrote on the Park Slope Parents Web site. 'It seemed odd to me to have big rocks in a playground.' Within two weeks, a stonemason had been brought in to grind the edges down. The protests continued. One mother called a personal-injury lawyer about forcing the city to remove the rocks. Another suggested that something be done to 'soften' them. 'I am actually dreading the summer because of those rocks,' still another complained."

From "The Ride of Their Lives/Children prepare for the world’s most dangerous organized sport" by Burkhard Bilger.