Someone Slathered a Massive Amount of Lube All Over a Playground in England

A family torn apart by lube. Photo via Plymouth Herald.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

We’re living in highly erotic times. We’re living in post–Fifty Shades times. And, really, can we blame someone for smothering a children’s playground in lube, as some youths did in Plymouth, England, this week? Add a little sexy to your world today. Lube up your office phone, your laptop. Put your lunch in a medicated condom instead of a sandwich bag. Just get fucking juicy up in here.

And so to Plymouth, where fans of local newspaper photographs where families furiously pose next to items that have offended them— an undercooked burger, a pothole, a can of tuna with a visible parasite in it—will be delighted to learn that angry local mom Clarice Thacker has revisited the sight of the extremely slippery slide that almost injured her two-year-old son Sonny due to all the lube what was on it. Only this time she went with a gilet-wearing boyfriend and a photographer in tow to illustrate just how angry she was about all the lube.

The main gist of the story is: a bunch of youths covered a playground in lube and it was hilarious. But you’re not really allowed to say things are hilarious, these days, are you? You are not allowed to replay the mental image of a two-year-old boy—he is wearing mittens, in the mental image, the boy, and one of those big puffy jackets that makes them all tottery and unbalanced—flying rapidly off the end of a lubed-up slide and forehead-first into a swing. Apparently that isn’t “funny,” these days. Apparently that is “a very sincere health and safety concern.”

“At first I thought he’d just slipped, but then he went down the slide and he absolutely flew down it,” Clarice told the Plymouth Herald.“Then his clothes and his hands were covered in lubricant.”

“Another lady was there with her grandchild and she thought it was glue, but it was like jelly and we realized it was lubricant.

“I found an empty packet of lubricant on the way out and took a picture of it before I put it in the bin.”

Residents were really annoyed about all the lube because the playground had only recently been transformed from a dilapidated 30-year-old playground to a £40,000 [$62,000], unlubed-slide-and-rubber-safety-tile extravaganza, but now all those joyful memories of laughing on swings and spinning on a merry-go-round to the point of nausea have been ruined by a slick of sex jelly.

“The residents in this area pushed for a playground in the park for so long,” Clarice added. “It’s the only one in the local area and it’s so well used—especially during half term. It’s disgusting that someone would do this.”

Don’t laugh. Do not laugh.

“[Sonny] could really have hurt himself when he slipped from the bars. And it was all over the climbing frame. We phoned the council straight away and they said they’d be out to clean it up.”

The council says it takes any and all lube complaints seriously—or anything else you might do to a playground, like drink cider on it while chuckling, or do graffiti, or rub dog shit along a guide rail, or unfurl a condom and leave it in a sandpit—and quickly got a cleanup team to get things sorted out. Pray for the cleanup team that the lube was the water soluble kind, or they’d be there all day.

In a way, covering a playground with a massive amount of lubricant is a message of hope. In this, the year of our lord 2015, there is a worry that the current generation of 13-to-15-year-olds won’t get up to any mischief at all, instead staring at iPads like drones all day, occasionally shifting position on the sofa to take a clearer and more vivid photo of their genitals for dissemination on Snapchat.

But here are some kids who are out there, just living: where did they get multiple large sachets of lube? It does not matter. Why did they target the playground? Because it was funny. Did they ever imagine they would cause a child to fly off a slide so rapidly that it made the local newspaper? Never in their wildest dreams. Go forth, you lube-y teenagers, and live your lives. You are the heroes Plymouth deserves, but not the ones it needs right now.

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