OddThinking

It’s the early eighties and my brother and I have a toy train-set. We want to compete to race trains, but we only have one locomotive on an oval track.

The rules for Spaghetti Express racing are born from this necessity.

An unopened packet of spaghetti is carefully balanced on top of the locomotive, and we take it in turns to time five laps of the track. The Spaghetti Express is precariously top-heavy; it will derail around the curves at high speed.

The tension is almost unbearable as I try to beat my brother’s best ever time, I speed as fast as I can through the straights, and then pull up before the corners – not too quickly, not too little, not too much. I am going too slow – I push the locomotive just a little faster — NO! The trains wheels lift from the track as the spaghetti topples over, bringing the locomotive with it.

[Instructions to the reader: I need to indicate that that was a distant memory, and the story has now jumped forward in time by about ten years. Please make your screen shimmer for a few seconds by finding the degauss controls on your computer monitor.]

The commute to work is taking me much longer than usual; there is an accident at a major five-way intersection ahead. I finally arrive at the traffic lights, and the cause is clear.

An open truck, with a poorly secured load, had driven around the corner too quickly. The load had toppled over and spread boxes across the intersection – boxes that had then split as they were bumped by other cars, spreading their contents across the road.

What were in those boxes? Packets of spaghetti, which themselves are being run-over by impatient drivers, and spreading crunchy strands of crushed spaghetti everywhere.

Of course, I pull over and helped the poor truckie trying to clear the road and recover the spaghetti.

I have to.

I’ve been there, too.