Those Were the Days

When did they outlaw Merry-Go-Rounds?

Seriously. Think about it.

When was the last time you saw a merry-go-round?

We had two at our local park - the kiddie one and the BIG ONE.

The big merry-go-round was in a sandbox at Verdugo Park. Big and Orange.

I remember we used to get that monster going as fast as possible and then crawl underneath it and lay on our backs and watch the whirling metal blades of the thing breezing past.

You could stand dead-center and just twirl 360. Sometimes we got it going so fast that if you lost your grip, you would go sliding out and over the edge.

Rumor has it that 2 or 3 kids were killed after crawling under it. I, myself, sprained a hand 1/2 a dozen times on the thing. Once I tried to jump on and caught my thumb. For a moment I thought the contraption was going to tear my finger off. It ended up only being another sprain.

This was back in the days when if a kid broke his arm on a merry-go-round no one looked at the toy as defective - they looked at the kid as defective.

"Johnny broke his arm on that merry-go-round!"

"Well, maybe if he wasn't such a momma's boy he would learn how to get on and off properly. He should be more careful next time . . ."

Seriously though, the memories of that hulking merry-go-round will stay with me the rest of my life. Like those strap-on skates I had. You know the kind. They were all metal and they strapped onto your regular sneakers. And when I say "all metal" I mean even the wheels. Can you imagine? Skates with metal wheels? Insanity.

And don't get me started on those disc guns . . .

My brothers and I used to keep the plastic discs in my father's used tobacco tins.

We would load up the chambers and fire away at each other. The discs would actually leave a red welt on your bare skin if you were hit with one.

"Johnny shot his eye out with that disc gun!"

"Well Johnny is an idiot - everyone knows you shouldn't aim things at your eyes . . . . and how did he pull the trigger with that cast on his arm anyway?"

For years I had a re-occurring nightmare that involved King Kong, the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz and my brothers firing those infernal plastic discs at me . . .

Of course, now that I am a parent, I can't imagine letting little Annabelle play on a merry-go-round.

"Annie! Put down that bag of broken glass, take the rusty nail out of your mouth and go play. Why don't you hurl yourself at the bars of that big metal food-processor-thingy that is spinning at 30 mph? Try not to sprain anything. If you do, look for your mother. . . In the meantime, daddy is going to try not to cut his lip on his pull-tab beer can . . ." Oi.

Of course, the whole point of the merry-go-round was not to ride it. The whole point was to jump on and off . . .

Even now I can recall that old feeling of standing there with the bars blurring by . . . as I lurch and stop and lurch again . . . . trying to get my timing and my effort and my courage and the dang MGR all in sync to make that fateful leap . . . all too familiar with the pain of a miscalculation . . . .

That's pretty much life lately . . . . watching it all whirl by . . . unable to jump on . . .

Yesterday I opened the mail for the first time in weeks. That's right - weeks. I checked the voice mail and it was actually full. Sounds absurd, doesn't it? Weeeelllll . . . . let me tell you all about it . . .

On second thought - no.

It's just not that interesting. Suffice it to say that working 3am-5pm leaves about 2 hours in a day to greet the wife, kiss the child, wrestle the dawg, pick up, clean up, take a shower, make and eat dinner . . . blah blah blah . . .

One of my favorite things about this blog is posting the photos of Annie-lu - but the photos are on the computer at home and the internet has been down for over a week . . . no idea why and no time to figure it out . . . I actually bought a new internet-connection-thingy but could not get it to work in the 5 1/2 minutes I carved out of my day 6 days ago and so there it sits . . . blinking blue meaningless lights into the 3/4 finished family room . . .

This morning I actually attempted to load some Annie photos onto a flash drive and cart them to work. Only, when I got to work, the photos were not on the drive . . . . no idea why . . . no time to figure it out . . .

So that is the state of things.

Whenever you see the ol' blog here go into bogus-link-mode, it isn't because I don't have anything to say or because I am too lazy . . . Oh! The blog posts I could do! . . . If only I had that one photo - or that one note I scribbled on the back of the receipt that I left in the left-hand-pocket of the other pair of pants (That's right - I am down to 2 pair of clean pants . . .) . . .

I just can't get on the merry-go-round . . .

It's got to slow down sooner or later . . . .

UPDATE:

After I posted this, I realized that some of the younger folks might not actually understand what a merry-go-round is (it's not a carousel). Then I realized that they certainly won't understand strap-on skates or disc guns or tobacco tins . . . . so I hunted down some photos on Google . . . everyone knows the witch, of course - I added that just for effect . . .

Reminds me of last weekend when we went to the Anaheim Convention Center for the Abilities Expo. The wife wanted to pick up a Muppet doll for the wee-one so we went across the street to Downtown Disney. I asked the sales-girl at the door to the Disney extrava-bonanza Emporium if they had a Muppets section (keep in mind that last time I checked, Disney actually has a Muppets show at the theme park).


She cocked her head, squinted her eyes and said, "M-m-m-u-p-e-t-s?"

"You know, Kermit the Frog, Gonzo, Fozzy Bear . . ."

She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language . . . ."I think we have a frog over in that section . . . " she mumbled as she pointed into the retail abyss . . .

And no, they didn't have any Muppet dolls . . .

Which reminds me of the time the wife took some old cd's into the used jeans and cd buy-back shop on 45th in Seattle. As the clerk thumbed through the discs, he stopped at the Ace of Base cd, shook his head and set it aside . . .

"No?" the wife asked . . .

"Ace of Base don't sell . . ." replied the clerk.

We are getting old people . . .

"life is demanding without understanding" . . . pure poetry - whadda ya mean "Ace of Base don't sell?"