The Chute

We have a laundry chute in our house that starts on the second floor in the hallway and ends with a trapdoor about 7 feet from the floor in the basement. On the first floor, in the kitchen, there is an access door to the chute. I know it is time to do laundry when I go to throw something down from upstairs, and instead of hearing that whisking sound of pure descent, the shirt just drops a mere foot or so, and comes to a rest on top of the log jam of a week's worth of dirty clothes. But there are those times when I drop something in, and you hear it drop, the sound exhilerating in a small sort of way, until it plunks on to the trap door. Those days are rare, to be sure, but today was one of them.
It was early in the morning and Theo had just gotten up and was standing bleary-eyed and barefoot in the kitchen. I was leaning into the fridge, getting out the juice, when I heard Jon open the 2nd floor chute door and drop in his running clothes. They zipped down the empty chute and plopped to a stop below the kitchen. Theo, who I am sure has heard this noise before- he and a few friends can spend hours dropping things down this chute- I can't tell you how many times I reach up to open the trap door with a laundry basket ready to catch the clothes, only to be pegged by a variety of balls and swords and stuffed animals... but this morning, he was tired, and he couldn't place that whisking noise. He quickly demanded, "What was that???" "Just Dad, throwing something down the chute," I replied. He thought about that for the barest of seconds, and then, "Yeah, but what would he be thowing down that would scream like that???" It's true, that sound does resemble something like a scream- let's say from a small animal who is going on a joyride that was a bit more exciting than it originally thought it would be. For the rest of the day I kept getting this image of Theo, trying to figure out why his dad had decided to throw a rabbit, or a hamster, or some other small rodent- who knows where Jon would have gotten such a thing- down the chute.