It was almost 6 p.m. when we dashed down to Frying Pan Park, less than three miles from home. There was a carnival there, and the place was swarming with kids and parents, including some very special kids and their kiddos, our children and grandchildren. We took in the big trucks and avoided the cotton candy, but what we could not miss was the carousel.

Is there a better ride in the park? I say this as a reformed roller-coaster rider, my last foray on one of those contraptions giving me a headache so powerful I thought I was having a stroke. 

But give me the merry-go-round any time, and call it a merry-go-round, too, not a carousel, because that name carries with it the madcap quality of time’s passage. Watching it last night, trying to pick out my children and grandchildren, it could have been my own girls who were squealing in delight, not their toddlers … so quickly does time pass … sometimes, it seems, even faster than the merry-go-round itself.