crdahlberg

The Train Broke Down! (Or Did It?!)

Disembarking my routine shuttle bus that takes me from work to my train, I noticed a much larger than usual congregation of travelers waiting on the platform. Ordinarily, only several handfuls of folks loiter there for its arrival. On this occasion, there were several hundred passengers waiting to embark.

Were there that many workers who had mistakenly set their watches to the wrong time zone? Was a train-riding celebrity about to arrive?

But there was another curious fact: the previous train, scheduled to depart nearly an hour ago, was still sitting, not moving, on the tracks exactly where my train was supposed to arrive.

Was this a spectacular train wreck in the making? The adrenaline assaulted my veins. Quick! Prepare the iPhone’s video function!

I joined the crowd on the platform, plying several folks for an intelligence report, and discovered that they, too, lacked solid reconnaissance. Interpretation of the scene was up to conjecture.

Suddenly I noticed a train official on a walkie-talkie. Surely he could advise me; I asked him what was going on. His response was less than gratifying.

“Train broke down,” he muttered, before yelling at some people to get behind the yellow warning line. I heard him radio the arriving train—my usual train—to slow down as it arrived, explaining, “There’s a bunch of people here.”

Like weathervanes when a storm approaches, the awaiting crowd all pointed their heads in the same direction, toward the unoccupied second train track. I surmised it was intended for the arriving train.

But how could this gang of passengers all crowd onto one arriving train, which surely already contained its full load of passengers? And what really was the story of that broken down train, a disowned hulk just sitting there, clogging up good track space?

The new train arrived, and we herded in like cattle. The only missing components were the mooing and the slop of livestock droppings.

Miraculously, I was able to wedge myself between the wall of the train and a vertical handhold pole. With my head cocked to one side, I managed to stand relatively comfortably, slowly rotating myself like a rotisserie to spread the neck pain equally.

On the floor at my feet, a bearded young man wearing homemade jewelry and a headscarf displayed video clips on his computer to an attentive young lady, eagerly displaying himself performing various yoga-inspired dance routines in shows he performs across the country—perhaps across the world—I never could quite understand the context. Understandably, this fellow had a difficult time manifesting modesty since he excelled in all manner of crafts, meditation, disdain for the material world (except, apparently, for computers) and a oneness with nature and ecology, all honed such that it would make a Renaissance Man blush in comparison.

Meanwhile, the packed train clickety-clacked onward, past my usual stops, passengers eager to disembark, understandably displaying a mere veneer of patience.

Then, a most curious event transpired. On the second stop before my own, the train halted, ready to disgorge the host of impatient and disgruntled crammed-in train riders. The doors would not open. What seemed minutes later, the conductor’s voice came over the intercom.

“We will not be opening the doors until the sheriff’s deputies tell us we are cleared to do so. Thank you for your patience.”

I rotated my rotisserie-like stance, wedged next to the vertical handhold. A mystery was afoot, involving sheriffs! Was there danger from outside the train? Terrorists? Bomb-sniffing dogs? Worse yet, was there looming disaster from within the train?

Several minutes dragged by, when suddenly, three sheriff deputies burst into our train car from the car behind ours. They had, apparently, made their way through the entire length of the train, finally reaching ours.

They didn’t need to go much further. Employing the assistance of another officer who happened to be traveling in my railcar, the four officers gave sharp instructions for two young men to stand up. They handcuffed them immediately, though the throngs in the aisle would have made their escape impossible. The train doors finally opened, letting us view the officers trundling the two ruffians past a police dog, and loading them into awaiting patrol cars.

It had all been a sting operation! The two unwitting young hooligans had been aboard the “broken down” train, which was a ploy to transfer all the passengers, including them, into the second train, thereby gaining time for the officers to board the second train and set up the arrests. Once inside, the officers methodically made their way through the train, before finally finding them within my car.

The look of astonishment passed from passenger to passenger as they realized they had been traveling all this time, enduring a fake train breakdown—with criminals in their midst!

For me, working in a parole office, it was all in a day’s work. Tallying up the previous arrests I witnessed earlier that day at the parole office, these were simply more of the same—arrests number five and six.

By the time the doors closed behind the sheriffs and criminals, I was one stop closer to home. I rotated myself within my standing-room-only rotisserie and let the clickety-clack tracks take me away.

The Worst Seat on the Train

(Not to be confused with the previous blog, “The Best Seat in the House”.)

I eased myself into the train seat, which I carefully selected to reduce the likelihood that other passenger legs might intersect mine. Personal space is everything on the train.

Next to me sat a woman. The seat across from us held a number of her bags and traveling cases. I figured no one would be sitting there unless she moved all of her stuff. The woman suggested I put my backpack next to hers on the seats.

I considered her suggestion briefly, but I declined. Instead, I slid my backpack beneath my own seat. I avoid putting baggage on a seat intended for passengers, even though the woman’s baggage occupying the seat made it unlikely that another passenger would alight there.

In this instance, it may have been the wrong decision. My seat partner woman opened her cell phone and poked its numbers. She leaned into it, speaking just loudly enough for me to hear her conversation as she uncoiled her wrath.

“What’s wrong with people? This guy next to me put his stuff under his seat! Under his seat! Can you believe that? And I told him to put it next to my things on the seat! What’s wrong with people like that? Are they stubborn, just plain stupid, or what?

“I think he’s stupid! Who would do something like that, when I told him to put his backpack on the seat across from us! Maybe he can’t hear! No, he can hear me! I think he’s stubborn! Really stupid and stubborn! Yeah, that’s it! Stupid! Stubborn!”

The rant with her invisible partner continued for several minutes as I considered how to put myself out of my misery. I couldn’t possibly sit next to this creature for the next half hour.

She continued her rave. “Some people sleep! I don’t sleep! I hibernate a bit, but I don’t sleep! I’m always ‘on’! Not like this guy next to me! He must be asleep all the time! Can’t even put his bags on the seat! What in the world is wrong with people like that?”

I would have to somehow move—and soon—without incurring her wrath, so I hatched a scheme. As the train approached the next station, I pretended it was my stop, un-trundling my backpack from beneath my seat. I lazily stood up from my seat, as though it were a burden to have to get off, and ambled down the stairway. As the train disgorged its passengers, I beat a quick retreat down the length of the car, then another car, and another, never stopping or looking back until I had put several hundred passengers between my ranting former seatmate and me.

Rant on, she may, but I didn’t have to hear it.

Lesson learned—sharing cramped leg space with others is accomplished by adjusting the knees. There is no adjustment possible for vitriol and venom; they require surgery from deep within.

I’ll take the knees, please.

The Best Seat in the House

It’s a defining moment. We enter a training seminar, a classroom or a dinner party.

Where should we sit?

If we feel high in the pecking order of attendees, we’ll glad-hand folks as we arrive, asking a nonchalant, “How are you?” without waiting for responses. We take a place near the front of the room, expecting a high level of involvement.

The back of the room is reserved for those who are either anxious at the proceedings, expect to be bored, or both. Early on, these seats become crowded; these folks can gauge their degree of participation after performing extensive reconnaissance.

That leaves the “somewhere in the middle” seating, occupied by those who are either, (a.) front row want-to-bes who can ride the coattails of the super-confident sitting just before them, (b.) the last row want-to-bes who didn’t get there quickly enough, or (c.) the folks in the accidental middle ground, who must sort out how visible to be and how much obligatory conversation to generate.

It’s hard for those of us occupying this ill-defined, middle section to know how to behave. Nonetheless, it should be familiar to us because, in fact, most of our lives are spent here. We define mid-turf–we’re average folks among other average folks.

In this midsection, insecurities may filter out sentences, paragraphs, and entire conversations. Brains can become muddled over whether we are being sincere and who we really are meant to be. If we’re not careful, we can become observers, life passing us by.

I occupied this sizeable Middle Ground while attending college; no escape seemed possible.

Until, that is, I vowed to redefine the anonymous Middle Ground by seizing the opportunity afforded within the vast thrice-daily meal lines crowded with students awaiting cafeteria service.

I decided that each time I waded amidst my fellow students while in the meal line, I would intentionally meet the one person ahead and the one behind me in the queue. And I would allow myself to only talk about them—not me.

After a few months of doing this, I discovered one important thing.

The undervalued Middle Ground may offer the best seat in the house.

A Sister and a Chihuahua

I took this picture of Mike (not his real name) a few months ago. He knew I had an iPhone, and he didn’t own a picture of himself, so I took this portrait and presented him several 5 by 7 inch copies. We bonded over those prints.

Mike rides his bicycle to attend the literacy classes that I teach to parolees. He’s been faithfully attending for nearly a year, gaining remedial reading and math skills.

He is one of 18 brothers and sisters. His father, who died at age 65, was a janitor. To help the family make ends meet, all the children worked in the janitorial business nearly from the time they could walk.

Mike, who stands four feet eleven inches tall, has been in and out of prison for most of his life. Because he has no top teeth left and only a few bottom teeth remain, it is sometimes hard to understand my Zacchaeus-sized student’s speech.

His hearty laughter explodes through his broom-bristle mustache as he relates stories of his elderly grandmother, who stood much shorter than even himself; he holds an outstretched hand to his mid-chest. Other family members didn’t dare cross her; she would curse them if they did, flailing exclamatory fingers in all directions. They lived in awe of her, and she always got her way.

Last week Mike didn’t show up for classes. There were no phone calls or messages conveyed to his other parole classmates. When he eventually showed up in class this week, his eyes were bleary with weariness. He asked to speak with me in private. Though my desk is in the middle of the classroom, I invited him into my “office”. He closed the imaginary glass door behind him. When this door to my make-believe private office is closed, the rest of the class is instructed to pretend they can’t hear anything we’re saying. And they honor the agreement.

Mike’s stubby fingers tried to divert the tears flowing freely down his cheeks, as he explained why he hadn’t been in class last week. Of all his brothers and sisters (evenly divided: nine boys and nine girls), his older sister always cared for and looked after him. He relied on her completely. Now, he explained, she was gone. Last week, she had taken her own life. I sat in silence while he cried, then attempted to give comfort. I offered his weeping voice a willing ear, a feeble attempt at solace, and a Kleenex from my desk. Probably the Kleenex provided the greatest help.

He exited the invisible door to my office and settled into his day’s studies behind his computer monitor.

A few minutes after our conference, his friend, also a student of mine, barely an inch taller than Mike, entered my office and closed the pretend door to my office.

“Look after him,” he begged me. “He needs help.”

I promised that I would, and I wondered what to do next.

Postscript

Barely a day after the narrative about his sister, Mike related the story of yet another, even more recent loss in his life.

Mike lives in an old camper, the kind that fits on the bed of a small pickup truck, except his camper rests in the weeds next to the freeway, in the backyard of the person who rents it to him.

Exiting his dilapidated camper home, tiny Mike noticed his pet, a tiny chihuahua, asleep on the grass. Mike’s approach did not seem to awaken the dog, who appeared to be resting with eyes wide open.

“Suicide,” mused a fellow student as Mike related the story, unaware of the death of Mike’s sister and the irony of his comment.

Mike wrapped his beloved chihuahua in a blanket and laid her in a shallow grave. As a final act of reverence, he removed the dog’s name from the miniature doghouse and fashioned a headstone from it.

Louisa’s Place

There’s an awkward, skinny breakfast eatery called Louisa’s Place in San Luis Obispo. The restaurant seats 50 people. Like tropical fish in an aquarium, uniformed women with splashy makeup bob to and fro within the waitress station service island, which bisects the length of this long and narrow eating place. If the cheap dishware clinked less loudly, every waitress would be within easy hollering distance from any table.

The diner does one thing exceptionally well: Louisa’s Place does breakfasts. Louisa’s gastronomical evolution has produced a singularly focused harmony of eggs, bacon, biscuits, pancakes and potatoes that has won the county’s “Best Breakfast” award for three years running.

An astonishing 27 varieties of omelets crowd the menu. Conscience-searing breakfasts are so cholesterol-laden that the blood thickens whenever a waitress passes by. The stomach, fearful of being conquered by the massive portions, discharges hydrochloric acid. The heart churns into overdrive, pumping liters of blood while it can still flow. Intestines groan and belch, attempting to advance their contents before the inevitable caloric onslaught. But the nose and tongue hold the trump cards here, silencing all cautions that other organs attempt to send to the brain.

Louisa’s Place successfully maneuvers to fill a niche market that separates it from its rivals. It’s a thin slice. Competitors are on nearly every corner.

So why does Louisa’s flourish? Perhaps it’s the aquarium-like waitress station, unlike any other restaurant layout. Maybe it’s the targeted menu that rewards the desire in each of us to indulgently break our sleep-induced fast after a good night’s slumber.

There are many things that Louisa’s place is not. But that’s what makes it so very good at what it is.

It’s all in discovering and knowing the niche, the microscopic differential that separates one niche from another.

The niche is the thing. A good niche, well done, is a perfect fit.

Succeeding in our life’s journey is all about finding our own niche, discovering the appropriate fit for our nuances, traits, and the singular quirks that will turn us, uniquely and successfully, into our own version of Louisa’s Place: a place unlike any other, where friends come, enjoy camaraderie, and leave, happy to have indulged. And they’ll be back.

Who could ask for more?

Wormdom’s Wriggling Riddles

A heavy rainstorm pounded our neighborhood overnight. The next morning, worms covered the concrete and asphalt walkways like limp brown overcooked spaghetti.

It’s as if the alarms on their microscopic iSlimes all rang at once, simultaneously summoning their squirming bodies to the earth’s surface. Worms, in various states of consciousness, were everywhere. The writhing traffic jam extended for miles in every direction.

Whoever claimed that worms all look alike didn’t closely examine their wriggling bodies after a rainstorm. Some worms resembled the wet strings from mop heads, shorn from the mop and flung afar, strewn in lazy curls. Others crawled in straight lines, apparently driven by invisible GPS devices to arrive at pre-calculated destinations by the most efficient route possible.

Some fat ones had those mysterious wide and extravagant pink bands that apparently house organs that make cocoons for the eggs they lay. Somehow, they just look pregnant. There’s no worm quite so beautiful as a pregnant worm.

But why all the sudden worm traffic hubbub? How absurd was this night crawl in the rain!

Had they imagined they heard the Last Trumpet sound and hoped to not be left behind? Imagine if the entire human race imitated the behavior of these worms!

Even though worms are bi-sexual, they have to mate with other winsome worms. So, perhaps rainy weather proclaims Date Night in Wormtown, complete with a slimy pre-dawn happy hour to promote prenuptial courtships?

Some believe that the worm crawling is panic-driven. A worm in a burrow in a tsunami-intense rainstorm is a worm tangled in a knot and drowned. They’ve got to crawl out—and quickly—to stay alive.

These reasons for worms squirming from their burrows during rain are all conjectures.

Scientists tell us that the real reason worms locomote in the rain is to move to new lodgings. Since worms have to stay moist to stay alive, it’s the only safe time to crawl long distances—for a worm, that is—to explore new “digs,” so to speak. Digesting all those issues of House Beautiful magazine apparently persuades worms that the dirt must be browner on the other side of the ditch. They scurry over to check it out.

So what’s the real “skinny” on wormy wandering after a rain? There’s much conjecture, that much is certain.

It’s possible they are anxious for the future, their slimy stampede driven by disquiet and fright.

Maybe they actually do perform impassioned courtship rituals along quiet moonlight-splashed streets.

Who knows if they are panicked by fears of events unknown and the “what ifs” that could wash their lives away.

And maybe they do yearn to find that perfect life that extends just beyond their own ditch.

Perhaps the reason we try to understand these strange wormy behaviors is because, in some ways, there may just be a bit of worm in each of us.

A Little Spittle

I’m riding home on the train as usual: head bobbing, checking e-mail on the iPhone, reading a book until drowsiness sets in and the terror of missing my stop brings me to abrupt attention. I take inventory of my fellow passengers. The neck of the Cordon Bleu-uniformed chef-in-training strains at a crazy angle, his head bobbing in sleep. A couple and their four young kids occupy two booths, the kids sprawled in sleep, their dozing father’s mouth hanging agape, framed by a dark goatee.

The fellow facing me, sitting one row ahead, works his laptop computer and phone intermittently. Something glistening on his lower lip draws my attention. Gradually, the glistening stuff grows, forming a tiny pond of bubbles where the top and bottom lips meet.

Then he inhales. The tiny bubbles disappear.

He exhales, and the pond of white bubbly froth grows again, this time larger. Stealthily, I watch as the glistening glob threatens to grow large enough to descend from lip to chin and splash upon his computer’s screen. Surely, he knows of the threat; he’s not even asleep!

He again sucks in his breath. The spittle disappears in a tug-of-war against gravity. For thirty minutes, the battle rages unabated.

I steal a photograph, diverting his attention by imitating video game maneuvers on my iPhone. But it’s tough capturing moving spit on a bounding train while ducking the occasional roving eye of The Spittle King. I capture the mere glisten of the froth.

It all seems so normal to him, this spit-balancing act. Is he unaware of the gag-inducing display? A wedding band encircles his finger. Surely his spouse has attempted to set aright this dismaying demonstration of salivary locomotion!

It’s my train stop. No need to leave the show; it’s also The Spittle King’s stop. I wait for him to exit the train before me. I follow him, examining the pavement for wet, glistening bubbles in his trail.

As I turn toward home, I wonder what sort of King I myself might be. My own ingrained habits are invisible to me. But to the neighbors in my life, they glisten, distract and annoy.

Time to start the inventory.

Webs

I happened by this stairwell walking through a college campus near my home.

I’ve been here before. The restroom at the top of the stairs has on occasion provided me very welcome relief during my two-mile hikes to and from my commuter trains each weekday.

On a previous dark morning visit, I had just taken relief at this facility. At the top of the stairs, I startled a landscape maintenance worker who had expected to encounter nobody else at that early hour. His name is Joe, and now, some two years later, we still eagerly look for each other, encouraging one other to make the best of the day as we pass–me, hiking to the train, and he, riding his tiny orange maintenance vehicle into the dark. By varying our routines by one or two minutes, we will miss one another entirely.

A slight change in schedule would also cause me to miss the tall woman dressed in black who vigorously walks a trail around a small park. If our trajectories coincide, we pass one another at just the right spot, each simultaneously tossing out a good-morning-greeting before plunging back into our individual worlds.

If I leave the house a few minutes earlier or later, I will also miss the woman wearing a fluorescent orange jumpsuit, silently doing her early morning tai chi ballet-like routines while focusing on a water fountain. I’m sure she misses her friends, who are performing their tai chi exercises in the company of other comrades half a word away. I greet her quietly to avoid breaking her concentration and move along.

Similar small early morning webs of interactions between onetime strangers occur around me without my knowledge, all captured in their own world of routine and circumstance, all governed by moments of the clock. Move the hands of the clock slightly, and the world of our relationships change.

Back to the stairway.

For this occasion of my visit, someone had used fishing line to create an intricate geometric pattern by tying each tiny thread to the handrail. The resulting weave created a spider web that continued up the entire height of the stairwell, fastening to the ceiling itself.

I’m guessing college students pulled this off; college students can do weird things. For me, this thing was both a weird and a wonderful thing.

The intricate geometric weave is like the web that surrounds us as we travel to the train and through time. Each strand has a name: Joe, and the tall woman walker dressed in black, the orange jump-suited tai chi-performing woman.

On my next visit to the stairwell, the web was gone. But in the distance, I heard Joe calling my name.

Strategic Reserves

The stretch of beach is strewn with large rocks, not the sort of place that invites sandal-shodden strolls. Contrasting color divides the scene. On one side, rough rocks protect the underlying sand from erosion. On the other side, crazy algae splashes the sand like streaks of fashionably dyed green swaths in an edgy contemporary hair coiffure. With each fall of the tide, the algae gleams green at sun, sand and shore as if it were its last appearance on stage. It is at home, abandoned to the forces of the elements. The riot of color catches the eye and the heart.

A coastal oil spill would play havoc with this bright green outcropping. Oil is our lifeblood, so we keep strategic reserves secure in deep underground salt domes. Dark, still, ancient, lifeless reserves harbored in salt domes. Very dreary.

At face value, we know the oil is far more important to us than this patch of green. It plies a place of security since it provides untold improvements in our lives. We need it. We keep it secure.

The poor algae knows no better than to play with wild abandon, shunning the dull brown rocks for the small stretch of sand. Unprotected and prone to the elements, its time may be short.

Still, our hearts belong to the algae. It is yet alive. It provides us an antidote for an otherwise drab scene.

We walk on, as we eventually must, and we are left to wonder. In the ebb and flow of our own life events, is there enough gaudy bright green to offset the cold, dark reserves that gather with age?

Swimming Sideways

The rainy, blustery weekend finally yielded to an azure sky during a recent camping trip, though camping is hardly the word. Gargantuan recreational vehicles, buses commandeered by graying couples and their miniature pooches, dwarfed our tiny fold-up trailer, which disappeared into their neighboring shadows. But we were living the high life: full connections to water and electricity—and a porta potty.

When the sun eventually broke through, we headed for the hot tub, where I soaked until my wrinkled skin steamed. Then it was off to the pool to attack a few of the exercise laps I had deferred for years.

As I descended the steps into the water, an elderly man bisected my anticipated lap lane. He was swimming sideways, across my lane. Not only that, the lane stripe was painted across the pool. But why?

Adjusting to the altered terrain, I heaved my trunks, and me with them, to join the sideways-swimmer. With my crosswise laps accomplished, my curiosity wouldn’t subside. So I paced, or rather bounced along the bottom of the pool, measuring the length and width of the pool with my stride. I discovered the pool was actually perfectly square. The rest was optical illusion. The lane stripe could have been painted either direction with equal merit. Which direction to swim? Lengthwise, at right angles to the older guy, or with him, across the pool? It didn’t matter. Same distance.

The illusion gave voice to a struggle that had been rising all weekend: what was a youngish guy like me doing hanging around this generation of RV-commandeering oldsters? The pool lanes described my dilemma. I was out for a brisk, youthful pool-length lap workout. Instead, an old guy drifted lazily, blocking my swimming lane, and I fell in behind him. Where were the high-energy folks my age that I could hang with? Our youthful, tiny trailer was buried amid hulking, slow-moving diesels with scarcely a non-wrinkly face within sight.

That evening, on our way to the restroom, we paused to view the RV resort’s neighboring meeting room, reserved for social gatherings. It was packed with oldsters, chatting convivially around tables bedecked with emptying wine bottles. One of the partygoers beckoned us to come in. Warily, we cracked open the door.

“Come on in!” she invited. “It’s a birthday party! For all of us! None of us wants to admit our birthday anymore, so it’s a birthday for nobody and everybody!”

Oldsters again. Where were the hip RV’ers our own age? We couldn’t get away. We seated ourselves beside the couple that invited us in. The wine bottles emptied as the guests intermittently nibbled on chocolate birthday cake soaked with melting vanilla ice cream.

We exchanged pleasantries with the older couple that invited us in. Where were they from? Where did they meet? Where did they go to college? Gradually, our swapped stories filled in the details of our lives.

Within minutes, lightning struck. In one of those rare lifetime moments you experience with someone you’ve never met, we realized our lives intersected. With a start, I discovered that I was talking to the sister of a girl I went to college with! In Chicago, in the 1970s.

And that meant that the older-looking woman I was speaking with, along with a good many other folks in the room were roughly—my own age!

In some ways, we will always miss our past, our youth. But we also know that we really don’t want to live that uncertainty and stress all over again.

We don’t belong there, but we’re not sure we belong here, either: older, among these older people. Is this really who we have become? At moments like these, we’re not sure how to go forward. Can we muster the courage to become like these people?

Ah, yes, I realize…I already am one of “these people.”

Maybe all of us are most comfortable when we reckon ourselves neither young nor old. Someone’s always behind, but someone else is also ahead of us. We’re always just arriving, always capable of, and ready for–change.

So which way do we swim the laps in the pool? Lengthwise, as we did since we were young? Or sideways, joining the older generation?

It turns out that they’re the same distance. Remember, the pool is square.

I think I’ll swim the diagonal.