Slip and Slide

I was going through the Sunday paper last night and was looking at the store ads and coupons.  I saw this huge inflatable slide for sale (only $599!) in one of them.  This thing is monstrously large!  It is probably 15 feet tall and bigger than most backyards.  It had like three water slides and a huge pool at the bottom.  I just can't believe that someone would buy it.  $600 would buy a lot of trips to the waterpark.  Can you imagine storing it?  Even deflated it must take up a bunch of space.  

Maybe I'm just old fashioned.  I grew up in the 80's you know and we thought we were pretty spoiled because we got a Slip-n-Slide.  Remember those?  Basically it was a yellow piece of plastic that you ran the garden hose to.  You run across the yard and then dive onto your belly when you get to the plastic and slide to the other end.  That's a boatload of fun for a little kid but they were entirely too dangerous if you ask me.  First of all, you had to use these little metal stakes to hold down the edges of the plastic and if you didn't get them into the ground all the way you risked serious injury.  Not to mention all the twigs and rocks you would slide over - plastic doesn't really cushion very much.  Heaven forbid you don't keep the plastic completely wet and you hit a dry spot (screeching halt).  The worst was actually making it all the way to the end of the plastic and sliding right off into the grass.  Depending on your method of sliding (belly or butt) you would do a face-plant in the muddy tore-up grass or get a nice bathing suit wedgie.  Ah, those were the days.