Originally Published in Threepenny and Sixpence
Copyright William Hammett 2015, 2018, 2022
All Rights Reserved
Sam Palmer was seventy-six and lived on a fixed income. He
worked the merry-go-round at the local amusement park in the suburbs of Kansas
City to bring in a little extra income. He was a pleasant fellow despite
having a few melancholy days on occasion. Life had passed by so
quickly. His wife had died ten years earlier, and his two children had
moved away decades ago. In the time it took to blink, his entire life had
whizzed by in a blur like the carousel he spun five days a week.
Sam liked to read books, from detective stories to weighty tomes on quantum physics.
It helped pass the time and kept his mind sharp. He was sitting in his
straight-back wooden chair one Saturday morning, having pulled the large wooden
lever to set the merry-go-round in motion yet again, when he recalled
Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Einstein's famous treatise
stated that people theoretically aged more slowly as they approached the speed
of light. The faster one went, the slower one aged. In the early
days of the space race, astronauts returned to earth a few seconds younger than
they normally would have been if they'd stayed on terra firma.
Sam smiled and let the carousel whirl a few extra times before he slowed the
great machine by easing back on the wooden handle. By God, he still
had a mission in life. The carousel didn't move as fast as rocket ships,
but move they did. A child seated on a painted horse was going faster
than he would go if just walking or running. Unknowingly, Sam had been
helping his young patrons slow the aging process if only by a nanosecond or
two. Maybe that's all they'd need to get a leg-up in life. Every
moment, or fraction thereof, was precious.
Sam began giving out free rides when his boss wasn't looking. And he
continued to allow the carousel a few extra spins each time he set the colorful machine
in motion. Decades after he was buried, the children wouldn't look back
and think that life had passed them by. Sam would have given them a few
extra blinks of the eye.
~William Hammett
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