Un-Amusement Park

When I was a kid growing up in a New York suburb, one of our great treats was to be taken for an outing to Playland. When you're 8-years old you imagine the local amusement park is the only one of these magical places in the world, and you can't believe your good fortune in having it so near home. In reality, this one was typical, wonderfully, excitingly tawdry, hinting of something sleazy and exotic. The music, the clatter of the roller coaster, the sights and smells offered a step into another somewhat naughty, skewed dimension, in this case intensified by its contrast to the pristine Long Island Sound, on the shore of which it perched like a tarnished crown across the waters from Jay Gatsby's green light. And then came the day when I put my nickel into a fortune telling machine. The eponymous Esmeralda, an old gypsy woman, creaked to life, whirring and cackling metallically as her wooden finger moved across the playing cards laid in front of her. A small white card appeared in a slot. "Your last days," it read, "will be your happiest." Or perhaps it said "your happiest days will be your last," but it doesn't matter. Either way it was a terrible burden to plant in the mind of a child. I can't say that from that day henceforth I would be terrified of happiness, but the niggling thought has always been there accompanying those moments in life when I feel genuinely happy, is this it? After all, Esmeralda didn't lie.