阅读理解 Old-Fashioned Play－For Pay Kids!Come have a ball!Or 60,000 of them!There’s a new type of business franchise that is appearing in shopping malls and neighborhoods across America offering pay-per-use indoor playgrounds ,which feature toys ,games ,supervised fun and a workout that doesn’t break the family bank． As public playgrounds grow increasingly worn and dirty, the for-profit centers offer clean, safe supervised activity as well as a variety of challenging exercises to develop youngsters’ physical fitness, usually for a fee of around 5$ an hour．“Playgrounds are dirty ,not supervised,” says Dick Guggenheimer ,owner of the two-month-old Discovery Zone in Yonkers, N.Y., part of Kansas City-based chain, “We are indoors; we are padded(铺上软垫)；parents can feel their child is safe”． In order to satisfy the need of two-earner families ,the new franchise stayed open in the evenings ,long after traditional public playgrounds have grown dark and unusable．However these new playgrounds are not meant to be day-care centers．Parents are expected go stay and play with their kids rather than drop them off．But several also provide high-tech baby-sitting services．At some of the Discovery Zones, parents can register their children in special supervised programs, then leave them and slip away for a couple of hours to enjoy a movie or dinner．If there is a problem ,Mom and Dad are called． The most fun of all, though, is getting to do what parents used to do in the days before two-earner families and two-hour commutes; play with their kids．That ,at least ,is old-fashioned, even at per-hour rates． |
