It started years before the infamous rollerskating rope trick (me in old skates with a rope around me and tied about twenty feet behind her bike) when we were kids and has continued ever since. When I was almost out of my teens, she convinced me to take horseback riding lessons, and we would lead the others in singing "Happy Trails to You" at the end of each lesson as we walked the horses to cool them down. We walked through Walden woods, stopping to take selfies with the Henry David Thoreau statue. We had to abandon a house at Strawberry Banke (old village) when one of us, I won't say who but it wasn't me, passed gas.
And this is when I eat my words.
My sister, who has taken several steps ahead of me, is rounding the side of the building when she suddenly zooms back and shoots me a waggish grin. "You are not going to BELIEVE what they have back here!"
I'm thinking, since it's an auto museum, maybe there's an old car out back for kids to climb on or for people to use as a photo op. We are at an auto museum, so her excitement should be connected to that, or so my brain tells me. I catch up to her and her waving arm and focus in the direction at which she is now pointing.
There's no automobile, but there is a self-propelling mechanism of our childhood sitting squarely by itself near a children's playground. Tucked behind the museum and near to a modern, SAFE playground, there is an old merry-go-round type recess ride. You know the one: steel pipes to hold onto, set into a huge round disc that spins at whatever speed your legs can propel it.
It is, quite simply, one of the most dangerous amusements from our childhood.
"You wanna?" she asks me.
Oh my gawd, woman, you know exactly what I'm going to say. It's the same thing I said when we decided the skates-rope-bike contraption was a brilliant idea; it's the same thing that happened when you encouraged me to join you and harmonize "Happy Trails to You" like we were some kind of Cowsills version of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans; it's the same exact answer that I gave you when you asked if we should take selfies with Thoreau, or when I had to run for my life or get blamed for the noxious fumes at Strawberry Banke.
We both grab hold of the metal bars and start spinning the old merry-go-round at a decent clip, and then, amazingly enough, we both jump on without killing ourselves. It's a lovely ride for about thirty seconds until we realize that someone must've greased the ball-joint on this baby because we are not slowing down. Not at all. We are, in fact, picking up speed.
I don't normally get sea sick, but I will admit that my eyeballs are starting to float just a little bit, and I might very well barf up my breakfast if we keep going like this. Both of us scoot to the edges and start dragging our feet, which isn't so easy because I'm wearing pull-on shoes and she is wearing sandals.
Finally we get the ride to a standstill, and we sit for a few moments to get our own bearings back because we still have a three-hour drive ahead of us. We need to save our shenanigans up and spread them out for the rest of the trip. However, this is probably the high point of our commute, and I have to be completely honest and say that I certainly would love to go back and do it again and again and again (as long as someone doesn't claim it's too dangerous and get the merry-go-round removed for everyone's own good).
