Slide and Slip

For the fourth of July one of my buddies is having a week long party at his lake house, boats, kegs, relaxing in the sun, generally good times. I decided to head up Saturday and partake in the festivities. It had been suggested in the month or so previous that we should bring back the staple of 80’s youth culture that is the “slip and slide.” Everyone remembers the commercial version, an extremely thin sheet of yellow plastic about 12 feet shorter than even the least aggressive pre-teen can slide. Our model turned out to be slightly more ambitious. Fifty feet of industrial plastic that terminated in a pool made out of hay bales and rocks (surprisingly, the rocks turned out to be a poor choice in building materials). We lubed it up with dish soap, turned on the hose, and took increasingly long running starts. In any case, it was a lot of fun, and by fun of course I mean ultimately painful for all of the participants.

Take any arbitrary physical activity, add young males, and voila! You have a potentially dangerous competition. Add alcohol in quantity, let females wearing bikinis watch, and you can pretty much go ahead and call the ambulance. Testosterone is a crazy substance. Men will kill themselves competing in physical tasks that in no way reflect on our value as human beings. I’m evolved enough to understand the irrationality of this. On the other hand, I will be damned if any of these assholes were going to be better than me at slip and sliding!!!

So it’s Monday, I can’t straighten my right leg all the way, and I feel like I was sewn into a burlap sack and beaten enthusiastically. However, it is with no small amount of pride that I admit that I was the fuckin’ grand champion of sliding. Who’s a winner, baby!!! In your faces!!!