Old Playground Blues

When one learns that the swing set from one's grade school has been dismantled, and the surrounding jungle gyms and slides moved across the parking lot to an opposite field, one first feels the pangs of nostalgia for playground recesses and squeals and shouts four decades old, then one questions the value of sentimentality, then one chides oneself for imagining that one's past is any more urgent a home to return to via nostos than another's, then one feels stupid for feeling that one is special, then one feels childishly insignificant, returning to the playground where it all started.