Choo Choo Train

Living near a train can be irritating if you trying to get across town and get caught by it or if you live so close to it you hear the horn blowing each and every time it passes.

Fortunately, it's not loud enough to be annoying for us. It is loud enough though to send Ham into a complete frenzy in which he grabs my hand and tries to yank me out the door every time he hears it.

It can be mid-conversation, in the middle of dinner, while reading a story, or in the middle of bath time. It hardly matters. Ham stops what we are doing and we listen to the train with astonishment.

And of course the frenzy begins where Ham attempts to peel us away from the task at hand and launch us into a full-fledge train chase down the street.

It's not happenin'.

Not when he's bathing, not when I'm cooking, not when it's a 100 degrees hot outside.

The one time, we chased the train down and watched the last cart go by, I carried a kicking, screaming Ham home because he wanted to continue to follow the train.

So to keep him happy, I tell him to go see if he can see it through the window.

It feels cruel because I know there is no way he could ever see it from there, but that's the only thing I can come up with for now.

He says, "K!" and takes off for the living room, scales the sofa and smashes his face into the window while he waits in anticipation. Sometimes I wait there with him while it passes and I pretend to be as excited about trains as he is. We sit by the window wondering when it will show up. When it doesn't Ham looks at me and says "All gone choo choo".

When it gets cold outside or I start running marathons, we'll chase that train down I promise.