The Old Merry-Go-Round

With its gilded decorations and panels with bucolic landscapes it stood out among the other merry-go-rounds with their cars, airplanes and bright yellow lights. At its heart, walled with mirrors in rococo frames, was the central pillar, large enough to make me think inside must've been a spinning palace. The fierce wooden horses were white, with carmine nostrils and mouths, pulling dainty carriages with cushions for the girls to sit in.

Away we went to the shiny music from the barrel organ, the horses bobbing ever faster. We children were now separated from the revolving adult world beyond the brass poles.

But curiosity made me look down the hole in the wooden floor beneath me. I saw a remorseless crankshaft, tarnished with age, thrust my horse up, then pull it down. Beneath this baroque jungle lay a machine that would crush me if I fell into its gears.

Every time since, when I saw the merry-go-round, I'd see the metal bars that fanned out underneath the floor, like a giant rasp to shred whoever fell through the wooden floor. Every time I got off the merry-go-round, I felt I'd survived a brush with danger.

This beautiful work of art, this bringer of pleasure, hid a mangling machine under its skin. And no parent could save me from it.