Day 3: TSA Update/Agleteer Dave's Slide Room

Ballio here.

I don't have any news today on the disappearance of TSA, except to say that a research team, headed by the renowned Dr. David Gupta, will be combing through the Supreme Aglet's lair tomorrow searching for clues.

Be sure to tune in your radio (or visit here) to hear Chuck Weaver's live coverage of Dr. Gupta's progress. And keep your fingers crossed.

If TSA is out there reading this somehow, I know he'd want us to press on during this difficult time. So with that said, I'm going to turn over today's Supreme Aglet post to Agleteer Dave, who kindly provided the following in answer to TSA's first memory assignment:

My earliest memory is around 1968, I was born in 1967 so logic tells me that I was about a year old. I’ve also verified this story with my mother so all facts are true, only the names have been withheld to protect the innocent.

As a child my father was in the military, an officer in the USAF, and as an officer he and my mother would attend various military events. On these occasions the children (myself being one) would be dropped off at a military base "day care" of sorts.

There was a room that is very predominant in my mind and is the center piece of this memory. We’ll call it the "slide room".

The slide room was just that, a large room with a concert floor and a large slide standing in the middle. This was no indoor slide – this slide was the big metal kind you would see outside in a playground of the 60’s. It had metal steps with hand rails and a long, straight piece of shiny metal with short sides that made up the "sliding" portion. (These kind of slides would be banned nowadays to "protect" children from injury and to eliminate an influx of "got a boo-boo" law suits.) I also seem to recall hoppity-hops scattered about the room, but the slide was the thing that impressed me the most.

My older sister, who also remembers the slide room, recently made friends with someone many years and states removed from the slide room. They were talking about the military both having that in common with parents. It just so happens that this woman had been stationed at the same base as a child and she also remembers the slide room. As wee tots they may have actually played in the slide room together.

I don’t know what it was about that slide room but for some reason it left a memory burned into the psyche of any child that encountered it. Maybe when you’re only 2 to 3 feet tall it just seems so impressive to enter a room with nothing but a slide in the middle.

With all that, the funny thing is...I can’t ever remember going down the slide. Go figure.

Wow. Everyone seems to remember the slide room. I remember the slide room and I wasn't even there! (I hope that's funny. I'm trying to write stuff that TSA would write in response to the letter above. I'm not funny, huh.)

Signed,
Ballio