When I as a kid, there was no better place in Denver than Celebrity’s Sports Center. I was not an athletic adolescent -- I spent more time reading books in my bedroom than I did tossing around the pigskin or chasing skirt -- but luckily for me Celebrity’s Sports Center wasn’t that type of “sports” place. It was a bowling alley/arcade/indoor water slide extravaganza where even the most geeky, awkward child could feel as though he or she was a star. What attracted me most to Celebrity’s was the waterslides. There were three: the Dolphin, the Shark, and the Barracuda. Despite its often being referred to as the “baby” slide, or the “slow” one, I most enjoyed the Dolphin. Not because I was a lily-livered wuss, but because it was the one slide with rocky overhangs and waterfalls. For the two minutes that you drafted down the Dolphin you passed through a veritable equatorial jungle, replete with cascades, overhanging foliage and steep cliff faces -- all fake, of course.) And being in that slide, spiraling down to the warm pool, I often imagined myself an explorer making his way to some subterranean kingdom inhabited by monstrous creatures and lovely damsels in distress. (They tore Celebrity’s down in the late ‘90s to make way for a Home Depot. Have people no respect?)
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