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There were two ways to get to Edward’s Cinema from my Simi Valley home. There was the intelligent way – paved with city sidewalks, stoplights and nicely painted crosswalks – or there were railroad tracks.

Immediately, one might assume that railroad tracks here means by the railroad tracks or off to the side, maybe. But ask yourself, would I be blogging about this experience if it did?

No, to Warren and me railroad tracks acted as a metaphor to our lonely, cool, though slightly-roguish identities. Stepping form wooden plank to wooden plank or balancing on the iron beam of death meant something more than we were idiots. It meant that we were cool, though slightly-roguish idiots, that let’s face it – the ladies wanted a piece of.

It’s my blog!

Anyway, I don’t remember if there was any discussion about which way we wanted to go, but we did end up on the tracks and yeah, we walked right down the center.

The crazy thing about my time in Jr. high and high school was just how totally wrapped up I could become in a conversation, especially if that conversation was about me. I just shake my head, looking back now at how I felt the need to pontificate the mysteries of relationships and schoolmate’s real intentions. I was always the example – yeah, the guy failing health class – always the example of what people should be more like. And somewhere, between some rant about why people should be more like me and why Tiffany Newinger should break up with – totally can’t remember his name now, Warren looked over his shoulder, said the word “train,” and we both stepped off the left and right sides of the track.

I know you won’t believe me, but literally the second we stepped off to the side of the tracks a train went barreling by us. Really. Like the wind from the train almost blew my hat off, and for about 15 seconds, Warren and I were separated by some commercial-cool-guy-killer.

When it passed, I noticed that Warren had his hands on his knees and was taking slow breaths in an attempt not to throw up. He actually understood the gravity of what had just happened while I, on the other hand, was just interested in getting back to my take on Tiffany.

Sometime later, I started to grasp just how close I had been to dying, but never really took it in the way Warren did. What I do remember however, and I guess this is the point of me recording this, is that when I took that forced 15 second break I could remember hearing the train. It had been laying on the whistle, screaming for us to get off the tracks. I had been hearing it for who knows how long, but just didn’t realize it until I stopped marveling at my own musings.

When Warren caught his breath, we actually continued to the theater the exact same way, learning a high volume of nothing from the experience. It would be another unknown length of time before I actually looked back at that moment to glean something from it. For the most part, I would just reflect on how weird it was that I’d been hearing the train all that time but never let it register. And then, when I did take a moment, that my brain would remember all the details it had just ignored. Later on I would conclude that If there is a judgment day, I bet I have another experience just like that.

God will be like, “Why did you do this?”
And I’ll be like, “Well, why didn’t you tell me not to?”
And then, I’ll remember all of the warnings I was too self-absorbed to notice but that my brain had been storing for that exact moment.

I hope Warren and I have a good laugh about the train thing then.