Here's the great thing about trains, people...

So Saturday mornings, I do something that I never thought I would do or would want to do.  But it works and I enjoy it and I have lovely people around me who hold me accountable and celebrate my progress:  I Jazzercise.  On Saturdays, that means I get up at 7am.  Voluntarily.

Now I'm a person who loves her sleep so I tend to push things a bit to the last minute and fly over the rural roads to the Jazzercise center and scoot in right under the wire.  NOTHING can stand, or should I say drive, in my way.  Not the poor old folks with their wheelchair accessible license plates, not the good old boys chatting on their ancient Nokias with arms hanging out the windows and dangling cigarettes.  I'm on a schedule here.

So imagine my distress when I came to the part of the trip where I have to cross train tracks and the railroad crossing lights were actually on.  I've lived down here for nearly 9 years and I can count on one hand the times I've had to stop for a train at this crossing.  Now that I have two little boys, crossing the train tracks is much more exciting than it ever was before.  I am required (I think it was written into the mommy contract I never signed but that my oldest seems to know the details of intimately) to say "1 - 2 - 3 TRAIN TRACKS!  KABOOM!"  Oh, and I need to cross the tracks slowly.  I will be reminded if I am remiss.  But this morning I am in a rare moment alone.  It's going to kill him if I see a train without him.

Anyway - train crossing with lights a-flashing.  And two cars in front of me, good citizens both, I imagine, dutifully stopping.  Except... we wait and ... no train.

The first car in line inches forward.  I see the wheelchair accessible license plate shining through the misty rain.  Oh, boy.  This could take a while.  Still the lights and the bells carry on.  The car ahead of me pulses the brake lights.  And yet, no train.

By this time, we've waited as long for the train itself as it would have taken a train to cross.  Clearly the lights have malfunctioned.  But I can almost hear the conversation taking place in the first car:  "But mother the lights is ON!  We cain't drive through if them lights is ON! Mus' be a train comin'!"

Miracle of miracles, a car approaches from the opposite direction.  It does, within seconds, what I would've done several whole minutes before:  it pauses, rolls down the window, waits a moment, and then easily glides over the tracks.  This seems to boost the confidence of the first driver, who finally - FINALLY - follows suit, allowing the rest of us (for there is now a crowd behind me) to do the same.

Thankfully, they did not make me late for Jazzercise.

So the moral of this wee complaint is to remind the driving masses the wonderful thing about trains.  They're big and they make a lot of noise.  If you take a sec to look and listen, YOU WILL KNOW WHEN ONE IS COMING, even if the railroad crossing lights do not agree. 

If this in some zen way applies to other aspects of life, it is purely coincidental.