When You’re Falling

Earlier today my feed delivered this item to my in-box:

Who needs stairs? They’re so last century. If I had my druthers, going up a floor in a building would be done via escalator, and going down would be done via slide. Giant tube slides, to be exact. You might think it’s impractical, but that would just mean that you’ve murdered your inner child.”

Folks, I’m here to tell you that gigantic tubes in buildings are actually very nearly last century, but can indeed be slightly diverting.

During my sophomore and junior years of college I lived off campus with two other gentleman, in an apartment building across from the school. The building, constructed some time during the 1920s, had the advantage of being not only close to campus, but hard by a pub and pizza joint as well. And as an added quirky bonus, possessed a fire slide.

What is a fire slide you ask? Well picture this: a spiral staircase, but in place of stairs, a metal tube that curls around the central axis – something akin to a water slide, but much more vertical. Now picture this structure embedded within the walls of what, if memory serves, was a ten story apartment building, descending form the top floor to the basement, with access freely allowed on each floor through swinging metal doors. That’s a fire slide.

I suppose the designer’s idea was that in the event of a fire residents would dutifully queue up on each floor and slide quickly to the basement exit and safety. This of course, was a mad and idiotic notion. No sane person would choose to exit a burning building by clambering into a metal tube in the walls of said building packed with dozens of people. That’s not to say that certain students wouldn’t avail themselves of the entertainment possibilities offered by a fire chute. Cardboard worked reasonably well as a mat to slide upon, and one could attain a decent speed between the tenth and the very bottom floor. But to truth to tell the thrill and novelty quickly wore off after our first month of residence.