Thoughts on the Train
The gentle afternoon sun gushes through the window and into my lap. The sun shines on my face, and I see the reflection of my own eyes looking back at me in my glasses. I'm on the Amtrak en route to Vermont. The train scuttles through the hills and valleys, past quiet rivers and red barns. But my attention keeps falling on this group of high schoolers on the train. I should clarify: white, male, sports-playing, privileged high schoolers.
Feelings that I had long forgotten about emerge out of nowhere, which is why I can’t seem to focus my attention elsewhere. It is a group of 15 boys, traveling, I assume, to a weekend match. They boast matching sports bags, and their friendly team banter pierces through the otherwise silent train. I’m observant of the dynamic between these boys, and how they interact with their environment. The way they casually stretch their legs into the aisle. Their confident saunter as they visit their friends seated in another car. I become aware of how I’ve unconsciously made my own body compact, neatly contained in my seat. These boys, on the other hand, are comfortable in their skins, and I get the sense that they have never felt otherwise. Even in the way they talk, it's clear that they have always known that other people want to hear what they have to say.
I remember the popular, sports-playing kids from my own childhood. Growing up, I was always acutely aware of how the popular kids belonged to a distinctly different social strata than my own. Outside of school, we might have been similar–my parents made good money, we always lived in affluent (white) neighborhoods. But when I would enter those school doors, I naturally assumed my position of the lower social class: the weirdos, the ones who don’t fit in. From my table at lunch, I would observe, from a distance, the popular kids. I was interested in their lives with the same fervent curiosity with which one watches reality TV.
Confronted with these boys on the train, their easy confidence triggers memories I thought I'd left behind. I remember, at once, how I wanted nothing more than to be included by the popular kids. When one of them would talk to me, I would feel a jolt in my chest, a twinge of belonging. Sometimes I would feel included, until I would catch my reflection in a window as I walked past, and be reminded that I was fundamentally different. That was how I felt, at least.
Now here I am, a distinctly different person. My brain feels shuffled because it’s as if two versions of myself just met each other, here on this train. But now that my past self is inscribed onto this page, it is free to dissolve from my brain, to make more room for the things that matter: the books, the trees, the family of deer that I’m just noticing as I shift my gaze outside the train, once again.
