So we each fit a heavy black contraption over our noses and mouths, pull the elastic tight to form a seal and snap on our rubber gloves.
I suspect it happened in the 70's when my father, who owned a drugstore, brought home a heavy metal contraption about the size of an old-fashioned adding machine.
I was scowling at her while she swung happily on the disused iron water pump in our garden, when the heavy rusty contraption fell.
At that time, the only way to go under water for any length of time was to use helmets -- tall, heavy metal contraptions with windows that sat on your shoulders and were continuously pumped full of air by energetic and devoted friends in the boat.
I have to admit, I felt bad for you, at times, during "Elysium," because you have to wear the heavy-looking exoskeleton contraption for most of the movie.
It was past midnight on the wedding morning when, with trembling hands, I inverted the heavy cauldron over this contraption, which looked like a yurt.
Even when a part of the science of flight had been understood, men like Otto Lilienthal, a 19th Century German pioneer who experimented with gliders, were doomed, their contraptions too heavy and too unresponsive to allow their brave pilots to chase birds or even to get much above ground.
It's a big, heavy, deafening, stinky, apparently dangerous contraption.
Today, these large, heavy, noisy, but strangely beautiful contraptions dominate Heltzel's small flat.
Built to hold two passengers, they're guided by a pair of debonair drivers who push and pull using guide ropes, braking with heavy rubber-soled boots, as the contraptions careen down the steep, narrow streets, barely averting the high stone walls, cars, trucks and pedestrians.
