Memoir

electric trainset

I visit someone's house. with my dad. I can barely tell that it's a couple of tables connected to eachother, they have some sort of spongy cover sewn over them. on those is this set-up. Electric trainset, surrounding pieces. At the middle, there was a panel, it was plastic painted black and gray to look like metal. The left had a lightswitch. But not a matte painted-over one like a common house switch. It had a case that was clear, and inside a little warm red light that only glowed onto half of it. There were some, not many, circular buttons: red and green and black. If I went on my tippie-toes, I could look behind the panel. Extended from behind it: The smallest thin black wires, only about two millimeters in diameter. The precariously thin wires were subtle enough not to be considered gaurish, though false greenery had aided at masking their appearance.Those crept far back onto the table, and well away from my stubby arms-length. At my childly height, I couldn't fathom how whomever had built the set could have reached so far across that wide surface. The sort of thing only to be admired from afar.

False greenery with some texture to it that crumpled a little in my touch to which I was instructed not to. The train tracks, short sticks in succession over copper-hued poles that snaked. Behind them a false hill that had brighter green hue. Extra false-hill pieces had extended around and back, over a dome, to make a tunnel, inside of which a black train was hiding, only a bit of its nose shone.

"Press this button."

"Wait really? I can?"

I press one, a toy train goes "choo choo" and goes from one side of the tables, towards me, then away.

There's a lego tree, part of the surrounding stuff. It's a pinetree, with intricate bristles, from the classic pack. I like the texture. My great-papa, who's still alive at the time and had decided to retire in Massachusetts, near Cape Cod, has a classic lego set too.

...

I'm at the neighbor's house in Philadelphia. I talk to someone who my Dad was chatting with earlier. He's got a sort of adolescent voice for someone with a goatee, he's got a taper-fade at the sides that had grown out slightly to make little circles on either side, and attop his cranium was some spirals. It was like springs that had grown past their own holding-capacity and begun to flop over. He smelt clean, but also like pink bubble-bath, and his breath smelt like the hotdogs with ketchup we'd been eating. His hair was clean too, looking freshly cream-rinsed, maybe a little sweaty at the front, like from nervousness.

Him and my Dad were chatting, about nothing, like should hotdogs have ketchup and mustard on them.

"I'm Sean, by the way."

"Seen?"

"No, Sean, like yawn."

"Oh, Sean! Got it."

"And yourself."

"Toby." (was that it?)

He asked where my mom is, perhaps she'd met him before. I could tell by where their eyes were that I was being talked about, this peeked my interest. My Dad replied, "Oh, she's visiting her parents down in Maryland. Her Mom's a native american too." (they were going through a divorce and I guess he didn't wanna mention it.)

"I aint gonna lie dude, I kinda thought they didn't exist no more," says the circle-haired dude.

I don't really understand what they're saying, but it makes me feel a little sad all of a sudden, I look down at my Dad's new brown shoes. My Dad isn't too shabby on his feet from a couple of theatre lessons he took in highschool, and he made a 90-degree turn with ease while still holding a red solo cup level without spilling anything. It was beer, probably.