When I was a kid, I always thought that air tents were really neat. We would drive by an air tent every day, which held a tennis stadium inside, an I thought that it was one of the most strange and surreal things that I had ever seen. It looked kind of like a caterpillar, and was huge, stretching on for acres upon acres and rising up for many stories. I always wanted to go inside one of the air tents, but my dad asked why. After all, none of us played tennis at all, so there was no reason to go in, and to him there was nothing particularly spectacular about it. Maybe he had forgotten what it was like being a kid. Whatever the reason, he could not really understand my fascination with air tents.

The first time I got to go and see some air tents was when I was in college. It was actually a complete accident, as luck would have it. There was a huge water leak in the auditorium where many of the concerts and other events of all kinds were held on the campus. The whole place was flooded and closed down for months and months, and nothing could happen there. Because it was the only campus venue for many important lectures, the deans decided to set up several air tents for the months that it was closed, and they really worked just as well. I really liked them a whole lot better than the auditorium, to tell you the truth.

The best thing about all of those air tents was that you could sneak inside easily, and they were so much fun to play in. We used to stage impromptu plays in the middle of the night in the air tents, and invite all of our friends. It was sort of an open secret that anyone could get in who wanted to, and so we had a whole lot of fun there without really worrying about getting caught at all. Once the air tents were no longer needed, they started to take them down, but they were so popular that the students campaigned to keep one of them around as a permanent fixture. And, since they did seem to increase attendance at performances, the school thought that that was quite a workable idea. As far as I know, there it stands today.