I have a slight fear of anything related to trains. It’s nothing too serious. I don’t start panicking or perspiring whenever I see train tracks, and I’ve never been rushed to the hospital because of an upcoming train trip. A disclaimer: I should respect people who have real phobias and say that mine is hardly one. It’s actually a mix of fear, wonder and paranoia.
The country I grew up in did not have a railway system, so train travel was almost unheard of among the locals.
Some may agree (at least its national airline does) that the United Arab Emirates is located in the center of the Earth, and so I’ve spent a great amount of time on airplanes, flying around to visit friends and family, and unlike Boston, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are absolutely not walkable cities, and so every family has two, three or four cars. So to me, a landslide derailing a train is way scarier than a car accident with 10 cars playing Dominoes.
I think this fear originated from something I saw when I was a child.
My favorite movie in the entire world was and still is the 1997 animated film, “Anastasia.” I was about 4 years old when I was watching this one scene where the long lost princess, Anastasia, and her friends had to jump out of train that was headed for the scariest crash in both animated and live-action film history. It should have been rated R. I mean there were flying green demonic creatures that possessed the train and broke the bridge ahead, and the train then fell into what looked like a greenish, fiery abyss leading to hell.
Fatefully, when I was 2 years old, I began visiting my aunt who lives in a small neighborhood in Bucks County, Pa., and to get to a nearby playground, we had to cross this obscenely wide double-track railway. And now, almost 15 years later, the entrance of my home in Boston, the majestic Warren Towers, leads me straight to the T tracks. Oh, the mind-blowing irony!
I have to cross railroad tracks sometimes five, six times a day! And there is absolutely no way I can escape it. So during my first week of classes, I decided to do something that would get rid of this impractical fear.
Sometimes, when something hurts, to relieve the pain, I have to make it hurt even more.
No, I did not attempt to get run over by the T. I did however stand on the tarmac in between the double railway tracks when all was clear. I took a long, hard look at the tracks, the fence and the pavement. Nothing was going to happen to me. In fact, I’m writing this to reveal the bright side that I have discovered from the joke that’s been played on my life.
Ironic happenings are not something to be taken for granted. I mean, it’s almost like a force, something magical and mystical that takes place in cold reality. We should make the best of it! And most of the time, if something ironic does take place in our lives, we should know how to handle it. And I’m not just talking about crossing railroad tracks.
Rhea Oommen is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at rheao@bu.edu
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