Spinning My Wheel

When I was a young boy, I spent a great deal of time in the sandbox behind the house. Sandboxes are never located in front yards, because felines are modest creatures and have no say in their own despicable nudity. The main difference between a sandbox and a public restroom is the ready availability of the latter during daylight hours, which is when cats do most of their sleeping.

One of my favorite sandbox activities was using my imagination, a term I invented to explain why there was no toy truck to go along with the wheel I found one day while excavating. A wheel's origin isn't difficult to determine once you know what to look for, which is how I knew it had once been attached to a truck. Had it belonged to a car, I would have known that, too, but it hadn't.

Noticing that my disembodied wheel created an elegant track in the sand, it was only a matter of time before one track became two, and eventually four, which happens to coincide nicely with the number of tracks made by four wheels, such as those found on modern trucks as they navigate the shifting sands of the Sahara. In my imagination there was a truck connected to my wheel, and together we had many adventures.

With my wheel, I was able to vicariously inhabit the roles of important historical figures, such as Ezekiel. Flinging my wheel way up—roughly into the middle of the sky—I immediately understood the wonder he must have felt as he stood in his sandbox, squinting at the graceful arc of his own wheel as it flew up, up, up, then down.

If Ezekiel's wheel had landed on his head, I'm pretty sure he would have been famous for discovering gravity. I don't think Newton had a wheel, though.