One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Portal To Bliss

John and I began cleaning out the garage over the holiday weekend, rescuing our once spacious, two-car garage from what has become a Sanford-and-Son-inspired land mass of forgotten treasures, baby items, craft inspirations, and home-improvement projects.

Towards the back of the garage we discovered the old plastic children's slide that we had gleefully liberated from a neighbor's "out" pile last fall--a toy we had every intention of putting to good use until we came to our senses and realized that slides of any kind and the concrete in our back yard do not a safe mix make. So, for nearly a year, the slide has gathered dust and lived a largely unloved life of abandonment.

Until Sunday.

We passed the slide on to cousin Reilly, imagining that he would put it to better use in his spacious, grassy backyard. What we didn't imagine until we saw it was what a great addition the slide would make to Reilly's inflatable backyard pool--turning a simple children's wading pond into a WILD RIVERS EXTREME JET STREAM BLASTER FUNNEL!!!

Or something like that.

The poor little twice-neglected slide received a decade's worth of love and appreciation in one afternoon, casting off its curbside-cum-dusty condition and vindicating its plasticized existence. You should have seen it glisten with pride--See, I'm Useful! And Tons of Fun!--as butt after butt after slick tummy glossed its way down its front slope into the warm pool below.