Einstein's Merry-Go-Round

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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