Love Train

Boy #2 has a new obsession. It is, of course, for a form of transport, and if you've acquainted yourself with his adventures on The Potty Diaries before, you won't be at all surprised to learn that it is for a train. But not just ANY train, oh no.

Boy #2's current object of desire is the mag-lev train.

Almost every waking hour is occupied with unending discussion on how it works, how fast it might go, how many passengers it carries, how it works, how fast it might go... Oh, am I repeating myself? Well, welcome to my life.

He has it all planned out. When he grows up, he will become a mag-lev train driver by day, a singer in a band by night, and after he has finished wowing the crowds at his gigs he will return to the mag-lev where he will sleep, because he is going to sleep on it, oh yes he is. He is not going to have a wife and family because, apart from the fact that girls insist on wearing lipstick on their wedding day (and he can't abide slidey lips), there will be no room for them in the sleeping compartment of the train.

When he learned recently that some good friends of ours are moving to Japan shortly (where one of the two commercially operated mag-lev's operates), his joy knew no bounds. We are going to visit this family, he decided, we are going to 'take a hotel' (his expression, not mine), and we are going to ride on that mag-lev train. Our conversations quickly evolved from general discussion about the train's advantages onto exactly when we were going to visit our friends in Tokyo to experience those advantages for ourselves.

If only he knew that not only were they going to be in Japan but that their mother is planning on using a train (not the mag-lev, thank heavens) to take the children to school every day, that would be the absolute end of any rational discussion about 'if' we visit, and his trunkie would be packed and ready to go before you could say 'magnetic levitation'.

Last night, I heard that our friends' planned move has been temporarily put on hold. It will still happen, just not straight away. And I am thanking god, not only that I get to spend a little longer with my friend, but that Boy#2 no longer has any immediate reason to force me to book flights to Japan...