Later that same day...
Ok so, as my mother would say, that’s why they have vanilla and chocolate ice cream. The social collision that is the observation car, and the private to the point of claustrophobic sleeping car. Isolating oneself from the rattles and chatter by wearing headphones, or absorbing the white noise as part of the larger experience, this 35 hour trip across half a continent.
The sleeping car is very low-ceilinged (actually it’s the sleeping bunk hovering overhead) and tiny enough that, even with the bed folded up into the two facing seats, there’s maybe a square foot of space to turn around in. The ob car has windows beside and up above, except for a strip directly above with lighting. Ok, admittedly, the young man across from us keeps banging his deck of cards on the table – the aural equivalent of his constant leg jiggle. And I am relieved that the teenager, trying to teach her brother the nuances of Monopoly kept raising her voice to compensate for his slow-going - a la Midwesterners shouting at Parisians to compensate for the language discrepancy - left the Ob car before I smacked her upside.
But it wasn’t till I came right out with it and said, ok sit with me I’m lonesome, that the offspring abandoned the sanctuary of the sleeping car, replete with pillows, earbuds, laptop with dvds, iphone, stuffed animals, 14 fashion magazines, pistachios, to come sit with me in the Ob car, braving the natives, the gum-smakin, leg jiggling, deck thumpin, too old to be wearing those short shorts natives.
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