When the little girl tired of the sandbox she climbed out and ran down to the swing set, where two baby swings were open. The girl followed, the father followed, and the friend, slowly, wandered behind. The father lifted his daughter into a swing, ignoring the girl lolling on the angled pole of the swing set. The girl held the pole with one hand, swinging her body around it a few times, but the man just looked straight ahead at his daughter. The girl was staring at him now, not just looking slyly sideways anymore. She knew she was being ignored.

Her next move was a bold one. She grabbed the chains of the baby swing next to this man’s daughter and hoisted herself up. “Leila!” I heard her screech. “Let’s see if I can still fit in here!”

Her friend, standing a few feet back, on the edge of the sectioned-off swing area, shook her head a little, her face unsmiling. The girl’s thin legs slid into the hard plastic holes of the baby swing with little room to spare. The swing was set too high for her feet to reach the ground, so she thrust her torso back and forth until the swing moved a little with the motion. It didn’t take long for her to realize that her skinny arms were far too weak to lift the rest of her body back out of the swing. “Leila!” she screeched and laughed at the same time. “Leila, oh no!”

The friend walked over to the swing, but kept her hands in the pockets of her hoodie. “I don’t know how to help,” she said.

The man was still pushing his daughter back and forth, though he was now watching the drama next to him as he did so—she succeeded in that. The girl tried unsuccessfully a few more times to lift herself before he finally turned to her fully and said, “Okay, this wasn’t a good idea.”

The girl, shrieking with laughter, did not respond. The man walked behind her and just looked for a moment. He had to touch her. There was no way around touching her, it was expected now. He put his hands beneath her arms as if she were a small child but her legs were wedged into the swing and she only screamed, still laughing, her body not cooperating. It took a good five minutes to get her out and required the assistance of not just the man and her friend but someone else’s mother to tilt the swing parallel to the ground so the man could slide her out. She ended up in a laughing heap by the man’s feet. “Thank you, thank you,” she uttered between fits of breathy laughter.

“These are too small for my four-year-old,” the mother said. “Get it? Don’t do that again.”