HA! HA! HA!
At the Harrison stop, there’s a dad and three little boys and what they do is wait wait wait for the train to come and then they yell their heads off—all four of them yelling over the thunder and screeching of the arriving and departing train—and all I want to do is join them. You get permission to do that sort of thing when kids are there. You can yell over the train or throw pennies into fountains or shut your eyes and spiiiiin with your arms stretched out or lay down next to a skyscraper—a highway to the sky—or ride those little mechanical horses outside the grocery store or tie balloons to your wrist or hang out in the treehouse or the sandbox or the plastic inflatable swimming pool or stick sticky-ribbons on your forehead or cry when you fell down—instead of getting up really quickly and inspecting the sidewalk for the thing that tripped you ‘cause of course it wasn’t your fault you fell down and maybe you can sue—or cry when you don’t get what you want or cry for no reason at all or, on the flip side, laugh for no reason, laugh really really loud until everybody’s laughing, like that laugh game where someone lays on the ground and a second someone lays perpendicular with their head on the first someone’s stomach and a third someone lays perpendicular with their head on the second someone’s stomach and so on ad infinitum and then everyone fake laughs until everyone laughs for real, that impossible laughing that you can’t control, laughing and laughing til eventually you’re crying and even though there aren’t any kids around to make acting silly okay—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.