![]() The vinyl-coated, waterproof fabric was a vast improvement-slicker and safer-over the perilous concrete. The next day, Carrier, who worked as an upholsterer with a boat-manufacturing company, brought home a 50-foot roll of Naugahyde, which he unraveled on the driveway. “Mike told me the story of his dad saying, ‘well you guys are going to kill yourself sliding on concrete’,” says Tim Walsh, game inventor and author of Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them. To escape the heat, the boys had turned the hose on the painted concrete, creating a cool, slippery surface to play on. It was the summer of 1960, and Robert Carrier had returned home from work to find his 10-year-old son, Mike, and his friends careening down their driveway in Lakewood, California. The invention of the Slip ‘N Slide is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the result of some childhood shenanigans. ![]() It is this shared experience-the visceral response to seeing that plastic chute atop the lawn-that makes Slip ‘N Slide one of the most enduring toys of all time. While my fondest memory of the Slip ‘N Slide is messier than most, it nevertheless connects me to generations of kids who have spent their summers skidding through backyards, soaked with delight in their very own water world. The seniors at my high school decided the incoming freshmen needed a bonding experience, and so they laid out at least a dozen bright yellow plastic slides across the soccer fields, dumped Kraft macaroni and cheese on top, and turned on the hoses. It was August 2000, and I’d been picking noodles out of my hair for days.
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