A Trip in the Wayback Machine...Slip 'n Slide Summer

Today was HOT. It was a day for popsicles and running through sprinklers. It was a day for sitting in the shade and going down Slip 'n Slides. It was a day for summer fun. We had many great yards for Slip 'n Slides when I was growing up. In Hawaii, we had a nice gentle slope that let you slide with almost no effort. When we moved to North Carolina, we had a broad, almost perfectly flat front yard that let you take running, flying leaps to take off down the Slip 'n Slide. But, somehow, that wasn't enough for my sister and me.

My sisters and I were always very creative. And, on this one occasion, my parents had gone out for the evening and left us with our favorite baby sitter. This was the baby sitter who had taught us how to slide down the driveway on my baby sister's old crib mattress. Can you guess why we adored her? But, this night, she was innocent of the chaos that ensued. Our beloved babysitter put my sister Keri and I in the bath tub and then went to put our baby sister, Becky, to bed. Well, like most little girls, we liked to play in the bath and, since it was still early in the evening, she let us stay in there and play for a while. Our bathroom in our house in Hawaii was long and narrow. The bathtub and closet were on one side and the vanity and toilet were on the other. In my childhood memories, it was a super long bathroom. In reality, it probably wasn't much longer than the bathroom we have in our house now. In our children's point of view, that bathroom floor stretched on forever and ever and looked like a perfect place to slide. Keri and I splashed water out of the tub and all over the floor and then slid up and down that floor. The water got deeper, the shrieks of fun got louder, and all was good in our world until our babysitter opened the door. In our enthusiasm for our indoor slip 'n slide, we forgot one little detail...that damned crack under the bathroom door. Every time we slipped and sloshed on that floor, we slipped and sloshed water under the door where the carpet conveniently wicked the water away. Well, as the carpet wicked the water away, we just splashed more water out of the tub and onto our indoor slip 'n slide. By the time our baby sitter got Becky into bed and came back to check on me and Keri, we had so much water on the floor and in the carpet that it took every single towel in the house to dry the floor...and, we lived in Hawaii so we had  TON of beach towels in the house. It goes without saying that my parents were not pleased with us. Luckily, the amusement factor outweighed the frustration/anger and, as long as we promised not to repeat our stunt, we didn't get in to too much trouble. Hehehe, we didn't repeat that stunt but we did plenty of other things. Our imaginations and sneakiness knew no bounds.