I take the Amtrak train here in California once or twice a year for various reasons... One of the trains I take is the "Coast Starlight" On my way out I catch it at about 8pm and it arrives at the destination at 3am. On the way back I catch it at about 2am and arrive at 10am.
I never sit in my assigned seat... I sit in the "observation" car... It's a car with tables... so I write/draw/work on my laptop...
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| My open sketchbook on the Amtrak with a drawing I made there |
But most of all... I end up talking to strangers...
So this train is usually running in the middle of the night... the observation car is quite dark... there's always a few people sleeping inside of it for some reason... the Amtrak crowd is usually senior citizens, young people, and people who cannot afford other means of transportation... its nothing like European or Japanese trains...
Anyway... my wife will hang out with me for a little while then she'll go back to our seats to sleep...
So I sit in there by myself...
The last time I took it... it was about 10pm... earlier in the night on the train we had met are were talking to a human rights lawyer from Los Angeles who was taking a long ride up to Portland to visit friends... interesting guy...
I don't ever ask anyones name on the train... I just talk... some times they ask who I am and I give them my website...
So its about 11pm and I'm in there alone... there's a group of age 55+ people two tables away from me and another two guys with their heads buried into their ipad's with headphones on... the group of people are playing cards and eating chocolate...
The door behind me opens and a pale thin young man walks in and sits at a table behind me, two tables back... almost immediately he buries his face into his hands and starts crying out loud... the kind of crying where you are trying to be silent but the emotions overtake you and you can't help but make sound...
I immediately look back at him... the ipad guys don't notice because they have headphone's in... the group of people older than me look over at him with a "that's a shame" look on their faces then go back to what they were doing...
I of course start talking to him as I still have a soul... I ask him what happened... he tells me he was just about to propose to his girlfriend who he works two jobs for to put her and himself through college when he found out she's been cheating on him...
I tell him to come sit at the table next to mine... as he does... one of the older women from the group walks over and gives him some water and food and a hug...
Over the next 3 hours... I talk to this young man how I wish a man would have talked to me when I was 19 years old and heartbroken...
I share with him a quote I've always found inspiring when bad things happen... I don't remember where it's from but it's something like this "The greatest heroes are seared with the most horrible scars"
He shows me the deep surgical scars covering both of his thin lower legs... he tells me that he was born with both feet on backwards and has had 20+ surgeries for them...
While he was still crying and explaining his situation... he mentioned that both of his parents were dead... and his grandfather who raised him had just been put in a care home... he felt all alone... he wanted to go back to his home state of Texas but didn't have the money for it at the time...
One of the things that initially calmed him down was that I told him that if he needed help with that I could help him out...
He explained that his girlfriend and himself were out in California to visit his fathers grave in Sacramento then up to visit his girlfriends family in Redding... the same destination as me...
He explained that right after visiting his fathers grave is when he learned about his girlfriends deeds...
His father was born the same year I was... strange eh?
After talking to him I convinced him to stay on the trip with the girlfriend as they had a return plane ticket 5 days later that was already paid for... Since we were going to the same place I gave him my contact info and invited him to come to some Halloween events we were going to check out...
At about 1 or 2 am after he told me how well he was doing in college, finishing a year early... his plans for the future... he thanked me profusely and said "you have no idea what you just did for me" I told him that's what friends are for...
I saw a broken young man collapsed into a table and I did my best to help him stand back up... everything else in his life was going great so I tried to help shift his perspective... a lot of times that's all we need...
He was really smart and doing well in school... supporting himself and excelling... so he was a lot stronger that he thought he was considering everything he had been through... I just tried to remind him of his strength...
When we got to our destination I saw him and a young blonde girl get off the train and be picked up by a woman in a mini-van... he didn't see me but I watched him sort of hanging his head as he got into the van...
I never did hear from him... but whatever his situation I hope our talk was useful....
I look forward to talking to more strangers on trains in the future... I wonder if any of them remember the time they talked to the strange man on the train in the middle of the night?
On the way back I talked to a young man who was a traveling buddhist monk... he dropped out of college and now travels from monastery to monastery... He really seemed like he wanted to talk to people... I noticed him sleeping on the ground at the train station before the train came... he explained the whole theory of reincarnation to me on the train which I thanked him for...
There was also a young woman who was a freshman at San Francisco State University... who said talking to us(Me, my wife and the buddhist guy) made her feel better as she was from a rural part of northern California and going to the madness that is San Francisco... she had decided to change Universities to one closer to where she was from... a good decision me thinks...
The takeaway is... talk to people as long as they don't look outwardly super dangerous of course AND as long as your not a woman alone talking to strange men in places that are not %100 open and safe with other people around...
But yeah... I'm working alone on my PC most ALL of the time and have very limited social opportunities outside of my home so I look forward to talking the Amtrak... now don't get me wrong the Amtrak SUCKS compared to trains I've been on in Japan and Europe but I like the talking to new people part ^_^
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