A couple weeks before Christmas, I was reminiscing with a friend about how great it was to get a Lionel train for Christmas. Then I wrote about a childhood experience with a train set. My wife, Nancy, was paying attention and damned if I didn’t get one for Christmas.
It was a genuine Lionel Polar Express Battery-operated set, not one of those old metal ones that cost a thousand bucks. But it came in a box, which meant I had to put it together since there were no children around.
One way to tell how old you are is to get down on the floor, then try to get back up.
If you can plop down and pop right back up with no trouble, you’re under 30. If you get down on your knees and go, “Uhhh!†when you strand back up, you’re under 40. If you get on the floor and try to put a train track together and then try to stand and say, “Holy crap!†you’re under 50. If you get down and have to recite Psalm 100 before you can crawl to your feet, you’re under 60. If you get down and can’t get back up and ask for someone to call 911, then you’re way too old to get a train set. But I got one anyway, and I assembled it by myself, and no paramedics were called to our house, so I feel good about that.
The reason I wanted a train for Christmas is to be able to run the track around our Christmas tree. How cool would that be? But since our tree was already assembled and had been fully decorated, I had to spread the track in the middle of the living room floor.
The Polar Express is not a fancy outfit. It has about 15 feet of track which I shaped into some sort of oval parallel-azoid. It has 3 cars and an engine that spits out smoke. It has a remote-control device to make it go forwards or backwards and faster or slower. It has a button that rings the train’s bell, a button that has the conductor singing Christmas carols and another button that makes the train’s whistle blow.
It’s really pretty fun.
There is a 6-year-old boy next door. I think I’m going to call his mom and ask if he can come over and play.