The other thing that happened that sounds made up and isn't

Okay, the second thing that sounds made up but isn't (first one here) happened last week on my train ride back up from Chicago to Minneapolis. I vastly prefer the train over the car for a number of reasons:

A) It's 6 or 7 hours of uninterrupted reading time.

B) It's cheaper and more earth friendly than driving.
C) I'm a crap driver.
D) The last time we took our 14-year-old car in for weird sound investigation, the mechanic refused to take it on the highway due to concerns for his personal safety. (NOTE: this does not stop DH from driving it on the hwy whenever he gets it in his head to.)

Train car of hell

Usually my Amtrak experience is totally pleasant, but this ride was shockingly awful. My car was full of people eating smelly food, kids fighting and babies crying, and, while I can roll with those things, as they do not specifically prevent reading, I was getting SUPER annoyed at the people behind me playing DVDs really loud, some sort of movie with lots of talking.

I tolerated several hours of this by a kind of fierce concentration. I was finishing Anne Aguirre's sci-fi novel GRIMSPACE, and absorbed in it, so that helped, though I sure wished those DVD people had brought earphones. And so did the people around me.

Anyway, around Tomah, WI, I was relieved when the movie sounded like it was over, and I figured they'd shut the thing off. By that time, I was finished with GRIMSPACE and was going on to Kesley Cole's DARK NEEDS AT NIGHT'S EDGE.

And they put in another movie--a kid's movie with bells and horns and screechy mouse voices. So I'm like, fuck this, I'm outta here. I grab my purse and my backpack and my water and M&Ms and go in search of a new seat in a totally new car. Which you're NOT supposed to do on a train. So I walked through the sleeper car, the lounge car, another crowded car, and then I come to this one really nice, quiet, non-food smelly car that had one whole double open seat.

Train car of heaven

I sit down, and open my book. Just then the train stops and my new car empties out even more, and becomes even more quiet. So I'm reading in perfect peace for an hour, and this fresh faced young college boy across the aisle asks me where I'm going and I tell him and I ask him, etc. He's going to some college named St. John's in St. Paul, he tells me.

We proceed to have this pleasant little train passenger conversation, and while we're talking, all these wholesome, fresh-faced college boys pop their heads up around me. They all seemed to know each other, and they were all smiling and SO sympathetic to me being in this other car. Now, I'm past the age of getting that kind of attention from college boys, so I was like, this is weird.

Then they're really keenly interested in what I'm reading. Which was slightly embarrassing, considering the cover. I give them a kind of G-rated version of the plot, explaining that it's a very exciting story about a ghost and a vampire. They all seem to find crazy-fascinating.

Finally I'm like, St. Johns? And they're like, Seminary School. They're studying to be priests. I almost spit out my M&M's. And I'm like, whoa. Cool. And I'm thinking, gee, I'm really glad I didn't go into any kind of detail on the whole vampire chained to a bed and amorous ghost plotline.

We talk a bit more, and then we all just go back to our reading. The thing was, they weren't trying to talk to me about religion or anything. I think they were just really heavy into human kindness. Maybe that is the first level of priest study. I can't say how pleasant it was. Car of heaven.