A True Friend

Here’s a photo taken in early 1957. It happens to be a photo of two of my sisters, but more importantly, my two sisters happen to be sitting on one of the greatest backyard toys ever created (which I’m pretty sure has long-since been banned).

We called this ride, "the merry-go-round". I think the more formal name was “whirligig” - though I’ve also seen it referred to as the more pretentious “whirligig-gig”.

The way this thing worked was that each kid would pump back and forth in opposition to each other, and the more and faster you pumped, the more and faster you spun around in circles as you tried to hang on for dear life. That, in itself, may not sound too exciting (it was!), but that was only part of the fun. The other part of the fun was getting a friend on it who may have had, as it turned out, motion sickness.That was like a surprise bonus.

After only a few minutes of spinning around at near supersonic speeds, said friend(s) would halt the ride, stagger off for a few wobbly steps, drop to their knees - and then proceed to throw up. Great fun for all!

At least one friend couldn’t even watch all that spinning around without getting sick. How great is that?

But that's not all. Here's another story. This one has nothing to do with the functioning of the ride or with someone getting sick or anything like that. This is a tale of childhood innocence...

When I was little, I had a friend, who we’ll call “Page” (because that was his name). Page was a nice kid who sometimes displayed an extraordinary amount of poor judgement, such as liking to hang out with me.

Sometimes Page and I would go down by the train tracks and pick and eat wild blueberries from the bushes that grew along the gravel strewn banks - and we would pretend that they actually tasted good.

Sometimes, while we were down there, we would put pennies on the train tracks and watch as they got run over by a train. (Despite what you may have heard, doing this does NOT derail a train - no matter how many times you try.)

Sometimes we would walk out in the woods, dig a small hole, fill it with mud and dog poop, then lay thin sticks over the hole and cover the sticks with leaves. We called these our “booby-traps”. What we were expecting to trap, I have no idea. Dogs? Squirrels? Someone with a broken ankle? Who knows? Whatever we expected to trap, it was obviously nothing we would want to keep, seeings how whatever it was, it would have been covered with mud and/or dog poop.

Thinking back, we probably didn't intend to catch anything. We were probably just doing it for the simple pleasure of building a trap filled with mud and dog poop, and nothing more. Sort of like, “It’s all about the journey, not the destination” - or something like that.

Anyway, one day, for some long-forgotten reason, I got the great idea of tying Page to this merry-go-round. It wasn't like I lashed him sideways across the thing or anything like that. Being a true friend, I was considerate enough to tie him up while he was sitting on the seat.

Also like a true friend, it should be noted that I didn’t use some scratchy, hemp-type rope. I used a soft, heavy duty, cotton-type rope.

I’m not sure what the point of tying Page to the merry-go-round was. Probably another one of those journey-type things.

Anyway, after a while, it started to get late and before long, Page was getting called home for dinner. Time to untie Page.

The problem was, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get Page untied from the merry-go-round. This was likely due to my top-notch knot tying skills, but it didn't help that his mother (a rather rough character) kept calling him and calling him. It's hard to untie skillfully tied knots when someone keeps yelling like that.

Still, it wasn't that big of a deal - until I, too, started to get called in for dinner.

Being the true friend that I was, I kept at it - but after a while, it became obvious that we were both going to get in trouble for being late, which was pointless. Why should we both get in trouble when only one of us was tied to the merry-go-round? It made no sense.

So... I went in to eat dinner.

About halfway through the meal, someone asked if Page went home. “No,” I said. “He’s still tied to the merry-go-round.” All of a sudden, everyone jumped up and ran outside to help get Page untied, like it was some big emergency. Apparently, it’s ok if other people disrupt dinner, but it's not ok when I do it. (Note the double standard.)

Turned out, no one else could untie Page, either. Dad finally had to cut the ropes to get Page off the merry-go-round. Even I could have done that - if I had been allowed to play with knives. (Yet another double standard.)

I don't know what Page told his parents about all of this, but whatever it was, it wasn't enough to bother them. He still came over to play and hang out all the time. This might have had something to do with the fact that his parents were the type of people that would send him out to play in sub-freezing weather to "toughen him up". Maybe they figured this entire tied-to-the-merry-go-round-for-half-a-day experience was just one more thing that would help in that department. Maybe I was doing them a favor.

Anyway, many years later, when we finally got rid of the merry-go-round, it still had a knot of rope tied to one of the cross bars - a remnant of the time Dad had to cut Page loose to set him free - and a testament to my excellent knot making skills.

Throughout the remainder of our grammar school days, Page continued to come over, joining me in digging more booby-traps, setting more pennies on the train tracks and god knows what else.

Some people, especially those with poor judgement, never learn. Thank goodness.