Insanes, Trains, and Automobiles

This has been such a busy week! I can hardly count the amount of time I have spent running around town, taking kids to preschool, attending meetings, and working on stoking all the fires I've got going with my various obligations.

Today, after dropping off an ad that will run in the paper for my church, Bud was pitching a wall-eyed fit to go see the choo-choos he had spyed on our way to the newspaper. Since the historic trains are located a block away, I figured this would be a thrilling detour for my train-fanatic 3 year-old son.

As we're driving over to the train station, we noticed one or two people kinda wandering the streets. This is not uncommon in this part of town, as there are homeless people who live under bridges and in any type of uninhabited, unpatrolled shelter they can find. There was one lady in particular who was standing at the side of the road next to the bus station. I smiled pleasantly as I drove my middle class-mobile past her, with my Britax carseats in the back of my car.

Bud exploded with enthusiasm once he was unbuckled and the door opened, much like King of the Wind bursting out of the gates at the Preakness. Not only did we get to walk through the engineer's area on the steam engine, there was also a chain of diesel engines refueling right across the way, which we got to observe. As we were walking alongside the historical train, taking in all the choo-choo wonder, I started thinking about how easy it would be for someone to come and either: a) snatch my child, or b) kill me and snatch my child. Morbid? ABSOLUTELY! It was one of those creepy, weird, "No one knows we're down here, there are no other people visiting this area, and it's known to have a lot of crime." The fact that we were there in broad daylight didn't ease any of my anxiety, so as soon as we walked to the playground at the other end of the track, we turned around and headed back to the car.

By the time we got back to the car, I could hear all this shouting. The lady with all the luggage was standing in the middle of the road, shouting so loud and angrily that I actually thought either a dog was growling or a man was growling. She was a block away, yet it sounded so near by! I start yelling at Bud to get his little hiney over to the car, which of course, begins a temper tantrum which could only be rivalled by someone telling Lindsay Lohan that happy hour is over. As I'm trying to explain to him that we need to go (without frightening him to the same extent that I am), he's still throwing his little fit. I've seen enough M. Night Shyamalan movies to envision turning around and standing up after buckling him in, only to have this lady all of a sudden standing right there, screaming in my face. We practically peeled out as we left.

As we were leaving, I noticed the crazy lady was loading her stuff into the back of a yellow cab and wondered just what her story was, as well as why she had frightened me. She looked as though everything she owned was probably in those suitcases, and I felt so ashamed of how extravagantly I live in comparison to so many people in our local area who are homeless, including children. In fact, I had even seen a pile of what looked like shrapnel or some kind of weird refuse under the bridge that goes over the tracks. What caught my attention was the American flag draped over that pile of whatever-it-was. It broke my heart to think that it could be a military veteran living over there. (Sidebar: I have even read reports of homeless veterans around the local area who are in their twenties and thirties, veterans of the current war that is raging. Who would have even thought it possible! Definitely not the first image that comes to my mind...)

I'm still musing over this whole experience. I'm not even sure I have any profound words or thoughts to share; just wanted to put it out there as food for thought.