Somewhere My Nuts

I took visiting Bro and 8-Year Old Niece into Manhattan today. That place is better than DisneyWorld. It’s less real. I rowed them around on Central Park Lake. I love watching city folk attempt to row a boat. The preferred method for urbanites seems to be to sit facing the stern of the boat and then “pushing” the oars in the water. What a bunch of idiots!

We walked down the mall and over to the carousel. I love the Central Park carousel. I’ve been on that thing dozens of times. It was 90¢ for a long time but now it’s 2 bucks. Still worth it! There’s been a carousel on that site since 1871. The first carousel was propelled by a blind horse and a mule (much like the company I work for). There's a beautiful abstract illustration of the carousel on the first edition dust jacket of Catcher In The Rye.



I lifted 6-Year Old Daughter onto a horse, strapped her in and mounted the horse next to hers. The ride started and her face showed the kind of careless joy that is inherent in all children, but is beaten out of us as adults. The carousel has a great big Wurlitzer organ that started playing Somewhere My Love (Lara's Theme from Dr. Zhivago) and for some reason I got all choked up and almost wept. What an incredible puss, I am. Have you seen my testicles rolling around anywhere? They seem to be missing.

We gave the girls the choice of going on a sun-drenched boat ride in New York Harbor to the base of the Statue of Liberty or visiting M&Ms World in Times Square. They overwhelmingly voted for M&Ms World, which I took as a personal defeat.