Dear Friend,

It's 3:59 in the morning. Once again I couldn't sleep (it's been really late lately) so I decided to go for a walk. As I was walking down the street toward the Woking Community Hall, I heard the train blow it's horn somewhere down the track.

"Well," I said to myself, "I think I'm going to go and stand in the middle of the highway and watch the train roll past right in front of me at 4 in the morning."

This was a pleasing thought to me, naturally, so I quickly stepped over a few streets and promptly stood (heroically) in the middle of the highway facing the train tracks.

After I had stood there for about five minutes (the train was apparently really far away or moving very slowly) I suddenly got the great idea to put a penny on the tracks and get it flattened, thus creating a snazzy souvenir, (something most people's parents have told them about doing in the past). Quickly, for fear the train would show up before I was ready, I reached into my pockets . . . only to remember that my pockets are completely full of holes and thus would have no pennies in them. (Old jeans may be comfortable, but old jeans' holey pockets tend to have a rather significant lack of pennies in them.) Thinking quickly, I reached in to my un-holey back pockets, hoping that possibly I had absentmindedly dropped some sort of metallic currency in there sometime in the past, but my groping hands only came up with a petrified candy wrapper. I was devastated.

"Oh no!" I thought. "The time has finally come when I need loose change and I had emptied my pockets only earlier that day!"

I reached into the inside pocket of my coat. Nothing. The two breast pockets, perhaps? Nothing. The two front coat pockets? Nothing.

Desperately I wondered what else I could possibly have a locomotive run over for me (at 4 in the morning, I might add). It had to be something I wouldn't miss. Hm. . . . No, I needed my watch. The bill-fold you made me? Unthinkable! I was out of options! (I wasn't even willing to consider placing a pocket knife on the train tracks.) AAAGGHHH! There I was standing in front of the train tracks at 4 in the morning with a train barreling down at 6 kilometers per hour and I had nothing for it to run over! What could I do?

With these and other thoughts running through my head I absentmindedly shifted my weight from one cold foot to the other. (My feet were quite nearly frozen owing to the fact that so much chilly air was getting in through the holes in the toes of my shoes.)

All I needed was some useless item that I (rather, Mum) wouldn't mind getting run over by a train.

I shifted, trying to work warmth into my useless shoes.

What could I do? The train was getting closer!

My toes were going numb.

I could hear (for the last 10 minutes – the train was going really slow) the train rumbling up the tracks. Then it occurred to me! How could I be so stupid! I DID have a useless something that I could have a train run over (at 4 in the morning)! My cold feet had given me the answer!

I reached down and took off my left shoe . . . and then took my sock off and put it on the track. (Just kidding.) No! I put my worthless shoe on the track and giggled back to my former position to watch the fun. At that moment, combined with the late hour and the cold (and the shear absurdity of the situation) there couldn't possibly have been anything funnier than watching my holey companion be obliterate by a billion tons of steel. Then it occurred to me: what use would one shoe be without the other? So I quickly took off my right shoe and put it on the track as well, and then giggled back to my spot. Alright, I guess there could be something funnier than watching my shoe obliterated by a billion tons of steel. Watching both my shoes be obliterated by a billion tons of steel!

Well, I waited for the train to come. It was still not there. I had plenty of time to imagine the already dead bodies of my shoes being mutilated by a billion tons of steel. (Yeah, I know. I was a little captured by the idea.) Then my mind gave me images of trains derailing and people dying and me getting in trouble; all because of my shoes! "No," I thought. 'That would be ridiculous. Myshoes would never be so devious as to derail a train." (And besides, it was a freight train, not a passenger train.)

As these and other more Socratic ponderings ambled their way through my mind, THE TRAIN CAMETH! ("Cometh" didn't sound right.) It bore down on my hapless shoes, faster, faster, faster, and almost broke 7 kph. Then, before my eyes . . . the shoes were obliterated! Car after car rolled over them and I could see their pitiful little corpses give a pitiful little shudder as each pitiful giant wheel smooshed it beyond recognition. (You must remember that I hadn't stopped giggling the whole time.)

Finally the 50 plus cars rolled by and I giggled my way over to inspect the damage.

It appeared that one of the shoes only got run over a mere half dozen or so times and was only slightly recognizable. Disappointing, BUT *dramatic finger point into the air* the other one was squishled into the tracks in such a wonderfully satisfying heap of rubber and fabric gore that I soon forgot all disappointment at the first one.

Happily I giggled home with the pile of unrecognizable material with a shoelace or two sticking out of it. YES! It was amazing!

Anyway, it's now about 4:32 and it took me as long to tell you what took place as it did to . . . well, take place. Now I'm off to bed. I hope at least YOU are sleeping right now.

-Logan-