One from the stinky vaults, 10/29/1999

The hole in the ground wasn't as deep as everyone thought it was. A lot of men had spent their own time and money to figure out its actual depth, but each man reached a point where approximation and guesswork was satisfactory. Standing over the hole, you can see the top of a ladder a little way down. Its rungs extend out of sight, but we don't think they reach the bottom of the hole. No one who climbs down has ever reported reaching the end, and there are a lot of explorers who haven't returned to report anything at all. Grandma says that they might've reached the end and fallen off in the dark, or they could've slipped because they were tired or clumsy. Uncle Feelips told me that this is the hole in the ground where old people come from. There's a door at the end of the ladder, the way he tells it, and when a middle-aged person gets down that far, the door opens and an old person takes a Polaroid and knocks the middle-aged person off into the pit. Then, the old people get together and have a meeting to decide who looks the most like the person they just got rid of. The winning candidate climbs up the ladder and picks up where the middle-aged person left off. This is why, Uncle Feelips says, old people appear to have such crummy memories. Last week, Grandpa came downstairs with a folding chair on his head. He started giggling and pulled his pants down in the kitchen. Uncle Feelips kept pointing and whispering, "See? See? I told you! See?" Then Grandma came in and they did the wild thing on the counter. Uncle Feelips sure makes a lotta money with those videos he puts on the computer. That's how I got this bike.