I've written a few times about the China Trade. And I suppose that I should have written at least one more to take up the subject of Mattel's apology to China to providing bad designs. (I wonder, did they apology to the entire? To their business partners? I'm not all that sure.) In any case, good of them to fall on their plastic sword - but hard to imagine that any of their product designs actually called for lead paint.)
But I digress.
No, this unfrosted mini-post is to share with you all this very funny picture that was making the Wall Street rounds last week.
The slides I recall from my childhood weren't quite this bad, but they were, for the most part, either useless or somewhat dangerous. Slides then came in one of four varieties:
- Flimsy little backyard slides that were completely uninteresting to anyone over the age of two. (These slides were often a part of flimsy backyard swing sets that were at their most-fun peak when three kids were swinging in synch and lifting the swing set off the ground with every pump.)
- Old wooden slides that the Worcester Parks Department hadn't managed to replace since 1926. They were really slow, typically rotting, and only good for slivers in your butt.
- Scratched up aluminum slides that were so slow we had to bring waxed paper from home to try to get them to work. We'd rub the slide down and get a couple of good rides in before having to rub it down again. Unfortunately, no one's mother was generous enough to give us an entire role of waxed paper - just a measly little square - so we didn't play on these slides for very long.
- Wonderful, shiny new aluminum slides that let you go really, really fast. The problem was they were so shiny and glaring that if you were wearing shorts you ended up with third degree burns on the backs of your legs. A high price to pay for a slide-run, but we were gutsy kids. Waiting for a cloudy day to use a new slide? What do you think we are, chicken little babies or something?
Thanks to my sister Kathleen - who was waxing down many a slide with me - for sending this pic along. While we're at it: Happy Birthday, Kath.
3 comments:
Ah, fond memories of playground equipment with sharp rusty edges... bike riding w/o helmets (what's that?)... my dad disabling the seat belts in the car so they buzzer wouldn't bother him telling he nobody was wearing them... bouncing around the "very back" of the Country Squire...
More memories (better bring 'em up while I have them, now that I've officially gone over the hill, birthdaywise): family of seven crammed into a sedan, with the baby riding on mom's lap in the FRONT SEAT--playing in cellar holes and construction sites in burgeoning suburbia once the workers went home for the evening--all types of unsupervised sledding on sleds, cardboard, aluminum flying saucers. And, guess what, we didn't die from it. :)
Kathleen
Well, birthday girl, how did you forget scooting under parked trucks;tumbling down the steep front lawns on Winchester Ave. in washing machine delivery boxes; squeezing a bunch of kids into an old baby buggy and pushing it down a hill (Wheee.......).Not to mention having a dad who would take you on a walkthrough a burned-down house. Remember when he opened the door to one room and the floor had completely collapsed.
But you didn't miss begging for chunks of ice to suck on from the back of milk trucks, tastily covered with diesel exhaust. Yummmy! Thanks for reminding me of how we got our liquid refreshment in the days before bottled water.
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