The Circle Game

Sometimes I'm amazed at what my children know, and sometimes I'm amazed at what they don't know.

I attended a middle-school graduation ceremony today. The younger students, including my 8-year-old daughter, made up a chorus. Their last song was, as the music teacher informed us, a real tear-jerker -- "The Circle Game" by Joni Mitchell, with the chorus:

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Women were wiping their eyes, and I was probably close to sobbing as well. The kids performed quite nicely, but I sensed that they had little idea of what the song was about. I asked my daughter later, "why do you think the song was sad?" Her answer: "because a man is stuck on a carousel?"