I Like Trains.

Let me get this out of the way right now. Trains are cool.
Ever since I was like, two years old, I have had a strange fascination with them. It all started with this SUPER cool onesie I used to wear to bed every night. It was my favorite color, darker than royal blue but not as dark as dark blue. I don't know what to call it. Anyway, all over the beautifully blue onesie were small red and green trains. It was perfect, and I seriously wore it to bed every night until I was way too big for it. I loved it even more when I wore a hole in the bottom of the feet and my mom patched it with a towel (yes it was blue too!). Even though I slightly somewhat resented the fact that I couldn't see my cute little toesies when I woke up in the morning...
Trains are wonderful. I used to go down town and look for trains on the tracks by the museum. When I saw them I would daydream about jumping into a freight car and riding it until I got to Mississippi, where I thought that sort of thing was a normal occurrence. Then I realized I was dreaming in the wrong century and that it would never work out. But still, every time I saw a train I would dream of running away...
A train is like a passport to the past. I mean, when you look at a train don't you kind of expect to look around and see women in dresses, and wagons and horses driving down main street, dirt roads, and trees everywhere? Hmm, I think I'll go see what type of flannel is available at the local General Store. Do you think they'll have fresh made lemon drops or peppermint and brown sugar candy sticks?
WHAT?! I guess I'm just about one hundred years too late..
One of my biggest childhood dreams was to ride in a caboose. I mean, imagine me running after a train (somehow I can catch up to it...) and grabbing onto the rails on the caboose, barely lifting myself up in time before I trip over my own feet. And then when we get close to a city, doing an awesome tuck and roll off the back of the train... Making my way into the city, and nobody has any idea that I just had the adventure of a lifetime.
Trains... They have provided me with innumerable fantasies and daydreams. But as with most childhood fantasies, you wake up one day and realize that's all they can ever be. Dreams. So real to me, yet ethereal to the reality which I live in. And then you have to move on with your life, though it's so painful to say goodbye to those dreams and memories.
I guess I was born a hundred years too late. Train conductors aren't very high in demand anymore, and I am at peace with that fact now although it was tragic and biting on the day I realized it.
But you know what? I can always look back on those dreams and that onesie with fondness. I will never forget the bittersweet day that my mom gave my brother that onesie. Faded blue and foot patched with a towel, it comes up to about mid-thigh. I don't ever remember feeling that small.
My brother loved that onesie, although he never loved it as much as I did.
But you know what I realized as I watched him (with jealousy) wearing it?
It doesn't have any trains on it.
They're cars.
CARS.
..........
..........
In my mind they will always be trains though. And I'll try not to let my dreams (founded on misperception!) collapse.
I might need a therapist...
Also...I think I need to get my eyes checked.