mapsedge | Train rides and illusions (Reply)

My daughter loves Thomas the Tank Engine. She's got the tracks, the engines, the little figures of the engineer and Sir Toppem Hat. She watches the TV show every day that it's on, owns several DVDs. She's gone through the Thomas the Tank Engine catalog and circled everything she wants that she doesn't have: the Roundhouse is the big one. In the way my adopted nephew loves (or, thank God, used to love) Pokemon, so does K love the adventures of the little blue, "very useful" engine.

It is necessary to understand that Thomas the Tank Engine is not an animated series. It's simply a model train filmed up close with narration, a sort of video book. The engines are as functional as any model trains: they ride the rails, smoke curls up from their smokestacks. They have interchangeable faces so they can change emotions between scenes. The only parts that move - besides the mechanical parts like wheels - are the eyes. The characters can look around.

So it was that we had tickets for a ride and carnival, when Thomas the Tank Engine came to Baldwin City, Kansas weekend before last. It was the first day I'd spent out with my family in a long time - since the tights season started, anyway. It was bloody hot, but the Chamber of Commerce for Baldwin City had the right idea: right next to the drink concession was a hay wagon with a half dozen large orange coolers filled with ice water, with paper cup dispensers. You could buy soda if you wanted, but if all you wanted was water, there it was. Kudos to them! (Are you listening, Independence? Santa-Cali-Gon isn't that far away!)

The company doing the Thomas the Tank Engine tour has taken a real diesel locomotive and put a fibreglass body of Thomas on it, and they travel around the country visiting small rail lines and setting up small carnivals. They borrow the passenger cars of the host line, and charge admission for the kids and their parents for a "ride on Thomas."

As you exit the train after the ride, the kids can stand on a platform in front of the engine and have their pictures taken with Thomas. K is not a patient child and didn't want to stand in line for the use of the platform, so we went to the other side for our pictures, where she could stand on the sidewalk away from the crowds.

As we passed in front of the engine, my daughter tugged at the leg of my shorts.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, darlin'?"

"Daddy, that's not Thomas."

Some other parents would endevor at this point to convince their children otherwise, to try and continue the illusion. My daughter has no patience for that kind of bullshit. (She has a look we've come to call "hanging the shingle." That's a story for another time, though.) I knelt down, looked in her eyes.

"Okay, hon'. Why do you say that?"

"Thomas's eyes should move. Those aren't moving."

Yeah, that's my kid, observant, sharp. We took our pictures, got temporary tatoos (I still have the remnants of mine), passed by the magic show, jumped inside the Big Bouncy Thing, and visited the retail tent where we got her a T-shirt and a coloring book. We went to a diner for lunch, and she fell asleep on the drive home, with her Thomas the Tank Engine balloon in the seat beside her.

A good day.