We read Overflow Calvin Trillin’s one pager in the May 5th New Yorker on the subway and laughed out loud. We laughed again when we re-read it a month later to find this excerpt. Trillin’s piece describes a man desperately emailing a walk-in bathtub company — and other spammers — to STOP sending him offers. His IMAGINING just what a walk-in tub is is hilarious: 

I’ll admit that at some point during your blizzard of emails I began wondering what a walk-in bathtub is. I assume that it’s the bather who does the walking in, rather than the tub itself. I assume that the bather opens doors on the side of the empty bathtub to enter, and, after closing the doors, sits quietly —or somewhat embarrassingly, if someone’s watching, since there’s not much for a bather to do without water—as the tub slowly fills. Otherwise, how would the bather get into the tub without causing a flood? At first, I imagined a sort of sling contraption, but that would presumaly be called a sling-in bathtub. Please do not email me with an explanation of a diagram. The more I think of it, the more I’d rather not know.

Of course, it’s the “sling contraption” idea that we love most…

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