Slide Slide Slippety Slide

I think my mother can probably identify with this video. My sister and I are less than a year apart and I'm sure that she spend a lot of time dragging one of us to the top of the slide while the other one slid to the bottom.

I, for one, love a slide. When I was a kid, we used to take these very nomadic vacations. We would just hop into that Torino (or station wagon or whatever the hell my dad happened to be driving), point the car toward the road and see what we found along the way. For the most part, it was a lot of fun.

But sometimes, it was just a little too stressful. When I was about six years old we where in the middle of Tennessee and I had just about had it. We had stopped at a McDonalds for lunch and the counter kid said to me (in perfect Tennessee Ozark English) "ya'll want yourself a piece of pickle?". Well this poor kid might as well have been speaking Farsi. I can understand the thickest brogue. I can deal with a guy from deepest Brooklyn who has no idea that the letter R exists. But I couldn't understand what this kid was saying. So naturally, I got my burger with a pickle on it and I was offended in the the way that only a six year old from Yonkers can be. I was indignant.

And the day only got worse. It was hot. Which I hate. My sister was on my side of the backseat and when I got mad we got yelled at and had to put our seat belts on (remember when that was punishment and not the law).

But then, just when I thought I wasn't going to make it, the sky opened up and the sun shone down on the most distinctive roof of all time--a Howard Johnson's Motel.

With a pool.

With a slide.

The gods smiled and the angels sang.

And I hopped out of the car with my dad and got on line behind the couple with the Jersey plates who had just finished filling out the paper work for........

THE LAST ROOM.

And I lost it. Big time.

I wept. I threw myself on the floor and all I could do was wail through my tears that "they have a slide--I want a pool with a slide--I need a pool with a slide--all I ever wanted in my whole life was to go down that slide."

If I were Theresa from the Real Housewives of NJ I would have flipped a table.

Now it's not easy to mortify my father but he scooped me up off the floor as fast as could (not an easy task as I was apoplectic) and was carrying me down the driveway back to the car.

And don't you know, here came the counter clerk chasing us down the parking lot calling us back.

It seems that the couple who got THE LAST ROOM, could totally identify with an overloaded six year old and had given us the room.

It was the best slide ever.