All aboard!
There’s an old saying that I may have just made up about trains being “less comfortable than a road trip and slower than a plane.” I will say that most of the people I encounter on my Amtrak trips (my preferred transport from Rhode Island to Delaware and back) don’t look like they’re doing it for the thrill of the ride. In fact, most of them look pretty dead behind the eyes. There’s something just slightly soul-crushing about the whole Amtrak experience (that’s actually their new slogan), but there have been a few bright spots on trips that are otherwise mostly me trying to connect to the WiFi for 6 hours.
When I rode down this year for winter break, I was lucky enough to find a seat next to an aspiring screenwriter. She was typing away at her draft, and I accidentally ended up leaning over and trying to read the entire thing. She closed the document too soon for much to be visible (probably because the weird guy next to her was reading her screenplay), but I did manage to get a look at a line of dialogue that will stay in my heart forever:
“You mean Todd? Our fake dead older brother that I pranked you with for two years?”
I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to figure out what the line of dialogue before that one was. Truly I hope it was something like, “Hey, remember Todd?” For the record, I will donate my life savings to anyone who writes an actual screenplay with this line in it. I will also donate my life savings to anyone who pranks their siblings with a fake dead older brother whose name, crucially, is Todd.
Sometimes it’s the kids: on one of the trips I took last year, a dad walked his toddler down the train car to the bathroom, and the toddler insisted on saying hello to every single person he walked by. On both sides of the aisle. “Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.” It was a very slow parade down the car, but it was pretty cute. Then, of course, they had to get back to their seats. “Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.” Still fairly cute. Then, for reasons I cannot understand, this dad walks the kid down the train car like five more times. “Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.” By trip #7, let me tell you, the cute factor had decreased considerably.
This is matched in entertainment value only by the time I sat next to two prosecutors on their way home from work. They acted less like prosecutors and more like chatty aunts, and one of them left her purse with me because, apparently, I “don’t look like a criminal.” This is true, because in crowded public places I somehow de-age seven years and look like a very anxious tween who, as I mentioned earlier, can’t get the WiFi to work. After my chatty aunt prosecutor came back to find that I hadn’t stolen her purse, she and her friend got a phone call from another chatty aunt prosecutor, and then mayhem broke out:
“She got the conviction! SHE GOT THAT CONVICTION! That guy is getting locked up! Yaaaas girl! YAAAAAAAS!!”
It takes a village to put together the average train car, and I’m convinced there’s not an Amtrak in this country that isn’t carrying at least ten very, very odd people at any given moment. And they do it in shifts pretty efficiently: when one lady with a dog in her purse gets off, one businessman who has a very important phone call to make right now gets on. But if I didn’t ride, in the midst of all the crazy, I wouldn’t have the stories to show for it. I’m in talks to develop “Chatty Aunt Prosecutor” for NBC as soon as Law & Order: SVU goes off the air. Her first case will be the mysterious death of Todd.
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