Thanks to everyone who sent me a supportive note yesterday. That was so lovely of you! Today’s post is a lot more upbeat.<\/p>\n
I’ve written about riding on trains here before, but I never tire of train rides, or thinking about why I like them. One of the cool things about riding trains is the chance for little random encounters. The tension level these days is much lower on a train than on an airplane, for obvious reasons, so people are generally more relaxed and open. Also, the seats are roomy, nobody is in a great hurry, and most people seem to be having a great time watching the scenery go by.<\/p>\n
Besides, you can alway go to the café car and start a conversation with the person behind the counter. These people generally seem to be upbeat and happy to see you, like Tom Hanks’ character in Polar Express<\/i>, only without that whole creepy animated mannequin thing.<\/p>\n
On the AMTRAK express train down from New York to Washington D.C. I ordered something from the jovial, if rather spaced out, woman behind the counter in the café car.<\/p>\n
She looked nice, so I smiled. She smiled back. I gave her my order, she went to get the order. A moment later she turned and came back and asked me what I’d ordered. So I gave her my order again.<\/p>\n
She smiled apologetically and said “I guess I’m in my own world”.<\/p>\n
Then I said (I don’t know why – it just popped out) “Better to be in your own world than in somebody else’s world.”<\/p>\n
She liked that so much she repeated it out loud to herself – twice – while she was getting my order ready.<\/p>\n
I told her, truthfully, “I made that up just now, for you.”<\/p>\n
She got very excited about that. “Really, you did?” she asked, “You should copyright that!”<\/p>\n
Then I didn’t know what to say. So I wished the nice woman a great weekend and left her a good tip.<\/p>\n
What else was I to do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thanks to everyone who sent me a supportive note yesterday. That was so lovely of you! Today’s post is a lot more upbeat. I’ve written about riding on trains here before, but I never tire of train rides, or thinking about why I like them. One of the cool things about riding trains is the … Continue reading “Another train of thought”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}