Instant Smile: Just add water

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . July 22, 2010 . 10:38PM

Growing up in the mid-80′s, the slip-n-slide was the hot new thing. It really wasn’t much of anything, to be quite honest. It was a small piece of plastic that you put in between your sprinklers. You would run, slide about 4 feet and roll off into the grass while accruing scrapes, cuts, grass burn and the silliest faces and giggles you’d ever seen from your friends. Then you’d jump up and do it again because it. was. awesome.

I wanted one of those little yellow pieces of plastic more than anything.

Luckily, I lived just down the road from my cousins and their parents were much crazier than mine. Or, it’s quite possible they knew that the secret to peace of mind over that particular summer lay in an enlarged water bill and a little piece of yellow plastic. Either way, my cousins got the slip-n-slide and I got to walk the quarter of a mile to their place every day to bust my butt on the plastic and the hard dirt underneath.

Run Run Run Run Sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide YES I’M FLYING NO NO NO I’m rollling! OUCH!

And back in line I’d go. And don’t think it was a short line. I wasn’t the only kid who knew about my cousin’s slip-n-slide. We lived in the country and the neighbor kids heard. So did their parents, and their parents weren’t going to pony up for a slip-n-slide or a water bill either. We’d dutifully get in line about ten kids back until we bled enough that it just stung too much to go again that day.

Nowadays, oh how old I feel saying nowadays, nowadays, the slip-n-slide has become so fancy! You can slide into a pool! The piece of plastic is HUGE and there are safeguards for those wimpy kids who care about bleeding. On the 4th of July, I found out exactly how intricate the whole slip-n-slide industry had become.

In Nashville on the 4th, our downtown area is amazing. Truly an amazing sight to behold is the area by the river that just lights up with booths of any kind of food you’d like, booths where you can buy the coolest hats on earth and a whole street dedicated to the littlest cowboys and cowgirls in the city.

As jets flew over the city celebrating our Independence, we walked around with bottled water and looked to see what was happening in our fair land. My little sister marveled at the cute boys. My mom wanted to go see what was going on down by the river. And me? I kept getting pulled towards these huge inflatable bouncy things, as all moms do.

After getting a stamp on his hand that made all the rides FREE, AJ was off. One of the first few rides to catch his eye was a large slip-n-slide. When I say slip-n-slide, I don’t mean one close to the ground. This inflatable wonder was about 4 feet off the ground and looked like a long island. Kids would run and jump UP onto it where sprinklers would shoot down onto them for about 20 feet. The line was short, but the joy was long.

I stood by the end and watched as child after child, including my own, jumped onto it and laughed themselves silly. It’s not been a great summer by any standards, but I couldn’t stop laughing along with them. The thing about joy is that it is utterly contagious. Some would jump up there, realize “OH NO THERE IS WATER UP HERE” and try to get down until mom or dad would take their hand and then lead them through the slide. After which, they would cry to go back on. There was a devilish little thing, who couldn’t have been more than three, who would go through the whole thing, slam his body down to the concrete after he got done, like the hulk, and give devil hands. I’m not kidding. Just like the orange ones to the right. He was totally “rock and roll” about the slide. And AJ? AJ would run, jump, slide, fall on his bottom, laugh and do it over and over again. He probably did it 30 times. I laughed just as hard as he did every time.