My Merry-go-round Fail

At recess, the boys thought it was great fun to twirl the girls faster and faster on the merry-go-round, as we held on for dear life. It was a boy's wildest dream to send a girl sailing through the air, to her demise... Of course, I was the only girl who ever forgot you should NEVER let go. I don’t 100% recall why I let go after the merry-go-round had gathered too much speed… Looking back, that was just craziness on my part!

I suspect what happened is that I was holding onto the tiny funny paper from the piece of Bazooka bubble gum I had just unwrapped, and the wind from the centrifugal force snatched it out of my hand. (I had just dared to learn what centrifugal force was, and now it was out for revenge.) I hadn’t finished reading that comic-strip yet (since those boys wouldn’t give a girl a moment) and I just had to find out what happened to Bazooka Joe. So, without thinking first (which was a bad habit of mine) I instinctively let go of the bar to reach out to grab it back from the wind, but all I captured was air.

In answer to the boys' prayers, I was catapulted about six feet, and got a bloody tongue from my crash landing. Can you believe that not one boy thanked me for making their dream come true? They all clamored around feigning concern, as the girls ran off to get the teacher who was monitoring recess. He sent me home; which was child neglect on his part, I thought, because living in town at the time, I had to walk.

It was such a nice day, that I darn near forgot about going home. "Was it my fault the route led right past the park?" I justified to myself. "Was it my fault there happened to be a lady walking her cute little Schnauzer there?" As I ran to pet her, at first the lady acted all concerned because I had blood on my dress; but after a minute or two, she kept looking at her watch—so I had to wind up my treacherous tale in a hurry. She patted me on the head, but withdrew her hand real quickly when I thought it was only my duty to let her know: "You shouldn't have cropped your little doggie's ears... How is the poor thing to keep the wind from blowing straight down into its eardrums now? Besides, they're cuter when they're all floppy-like. When you make their ears pointed, don't you think they look like Devil Dogs?" She cut me off, abruptly saying it was past time for me to be getting home. "Is it my fault I'm too weak to walk fast?" I thought to myself. But, I simply called after her, in a friendly manner: "So long, Devil Dog!" I could hear her heels going, "Clickety-clack, clickety-clack" as she practically pulled the Devil Dog along.

Skipping along, finally, I spied my street—my house was just around the corner. Suddenly, I felt so weak I didn't think I could make it... Gasping, I finally staggered up our front lawn, and weakly called out to Mama from my blood-stained mouth, "Your half-dead child is home!" But did I get any sympathy? No. (Have I mentioned that children rarely got sympathy for foolish injuries, back in those days?) Mama just asked, all annoyed-like: “What are YOU doing home?” I related how I was sent to stagger home because her poor, injured child was lucky to be alive! Rather than the hug I deserved, all she said was, “Well, THAT’LL teach you! Now, go put some ice on it.” Then, she went back to her crocheting and watching her TV stories. (She was just at the part where the grains of the hourglass were about ready to fall, on "The Edge of Night".)

The gossip all around the school yard was that I had bitten my tongue clear off. The next day, every single kid I encountered, wanted me to open my mouth and show them. A line formed wherever I tried to go. How disappointed they all were that I still had a tongue! Some of them were quite angry at me for the let-down.

(After that incident, the lesson I took away from all of this was that children should NEVER EVER learn about centrifugal force. You DON'T want to mess with wicked forces like that, kids! It’s like playing with fire.)