Victims of technology

Where have all the pneumatic tubes gone? Those were some of the coolest things on the planet. When I was a kid, late 70s, early 80s, you saw them around at banks, some stores, maybe libraries. They had these capsules - cylinders about 4 inches in diameter and around 10 inches long. You put whatever you wanted to put in them, popped it into this pipe next to you, and it was instantly whisked away to the other end, which could be 20 feet, 100 feet away. I don't know what kind of range they had. But they made a cool sound when they got sucked in, like a vacuum sort of thing, and if you were on the other end, there's nothing there, then BAM - you've got mail. Or a memo, or cash, or gerbils - whatever they needed to send that could fit in the tube.

When I finally have my dream house, there WILL be pneumatic tubes. I promise you that. Also a dumbwaiter - a strong one, that I could actually climb into and hoist myself up in, or just hide and eavesdrop on people. Or hide from ax murderers in. I think I got the dumbwaiter fixation and all its attending scenarios from reading Harriet the Spy as a kid. Finally, my house will have a laundry chute and it'll have one of those big old laundry carts at the bottom. The type prison inmates use to escape in old movies. Again, the laundry chute will have to be big enough for me to get in it and slide down into a pile of sheets or something in the laundry cart.

The ultimate, though, would be a capsule for a pneumatic tube big enough to get into. You could step in while it was on those conveyer-belt type of rollers, then push a button on the inside that made a thing on the outside push it, on the rollers, into the tube. Then you'd make that cool sucking sound and you'd be off. Unless you made the tube sideways on one end, I think you'd end up starting off right side up and ending up upside down. Best to plan ahead for that, I think.

That would be the coolest thing for me short of a roller coaster that runs through a big house, or a room where you walk in and the floor's like 10 feet down and you have to swing around on all these ropes hanging from the ceiling, and then there'd be rope swings with seats, or an island in the middle of it (maybe with stairs so you could climb back up if you feel, otherwise you'd need another door - but that door could take you to the laundry room! such exciting possibilities, huh?). And at the bottom of the room, it'd be filled with Nerf balls or something like that. If I was Bill Gates rich, I'd build that place right now. Secret passages, too. And a tunnel system that takes you to a little shed or cabin a quarter mile away.

This reminds me, I have to go check my Mega Millions ticket. Seriously.