What a trip.
…and I was in it for the last 2 days. I went on Amtrak, which can be all kinds of different experiences depending on who you have to share the train with. Usually I get a mix of Detroit riff-raff and Ann Arbor students.
This time, coming out of Chicago I had a full car of attendees on their way to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, one of Kalamazoo’s claims to fame for nearly 40 years. I didn’t really get in on any of the conversation (until the end when they asked me about my knitting) but it was rather pleasant to be surrounded by talks of 12th century philosophy, the Dutch perspective on medieval history, and a wide assortment of foreign accents. Especially entertaining was the commentary on American public transportation. They were quite lively but in a good way. I’m such a snob.
Coming back was another story. The first half of my car was full of a Christian boys’ middle school class science trip. (They got off in Hammond, Indiana–are they studying industrial waste deposits??) One kid had a disposable camera and spent the entire four hours cranking that little thing that you use to forward the film, and flashing the flash. He had already used up all the pictures, probably before they even got on the train.
And the second half of the car was me sandwiched in between three generations of women from an extended family, on their way for what was ostensibly a mothers’ day weekend, but what boiled down to probably two days of begging, and then one day of visiting the dreadful American Girl Store. I can’t bring myself to link to this place, if you’re not familiar. But, I suspect a lot of people in this country are! It’s like the newer, way more expensive version of Cabbage Patch or something. Except the dolls look like the kids who own them, and after you’ve bought one you can take it back to the store for a $10 hair-do while you shop. Etc. Creepy.
One of Rodney’s great analogies is this: Other people’s children are like other people’s poetry.
It’s hard to be interested in the ones that aren’t yours. More snobbery, I know. I seriously added it up, and on a train car that could hold maybe 60 people, at least 40 of them were under the age of 12. It was madness. Even the knitting could not relax me. One girl asked what I was making. I said it was a baby hat (because I started one) and she said “For what kind of baby?”
Maybe the DPNs confused her…I just said it was for a human baby that wasn’t going to be born for another month so I had a lot of time to work on it.
Anyway, I’m not trying to be that much of a jerk about children. It was that time of afternoon when, if one has a day off work, one would very much enjoy a long nap or a good segment of reading and those things were denied. Instead I spent it thinking about how I might seriously consider home-schooling my own kids someday, if it will keep them from turning into little robots who whine endlessly for Build-a-Bear, Happy Meals, and everything else that is so shamelessly marketed into their innocent minds. So really, some adults are to blame, somewhere.
I did finish the baby slippers, and I added another 12″ to the shawl. It is feeling like the halfway point has definitely been passed.
Finishing these was easy enough, but to do it neatly was a whole other story. I figure they’ll get worn a few times and tossed in a drawer, so I didn’t fuss over it too much.
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