When In Doubt, Pinky Out

There is a saying which backdates to the middle of the 18th century in England, when tea was at its most popular there. In the upper class circles of 18th century England, an etiquette around drinking tea had developed which entailed the use of all sorts of weird paraphernalia and required the feminine drinker to abandon the use of her smallest finger (pinky). This abandonment demonstrated her delicate, fragile nature. The saying, "When in doubt, pinky out", came to be a phrase which both educated the lower classes of accepted etiquette and mocked it for it's pretentiousness.


Having grown up without the context in which this phrase belongs, I've developed what now seems a peculiar habit which becomes apparent whenever I'm approached by a difficult situation.

As a side note, 

CAKE = DOUBT.

The appearance of cake without an adequate explanation always seems to result in confusion, mild panic and agitation. 

"Where did the cake come from?"

"Is it for me?"

"Will I like it?"

Cake can cause more problems than the sweetly savoured flavour can account for. Beware.

Trains

Trains. They're big. They're heavy. They have cogs and gears. They make loud noises. They travel really really fast. Is it any wonder that I'm scared of them? I mean, an ordinary passenger train with 3 cars can weigh up to 8 tonnes and travel at 200km/h. At that speed it's packing 1.6GN of force, which is the same amount of force as a person falling from a 2041km high building, which is like falling off the moon. And since it's possible to die from a fall of 10m, a single train at top speed could kill roughly 204,000 people, lined up on the tracks. That's roughly the population of Bolitvia. Imagine the damage that the thousands of trains all around the world could do if everyone in the world decided to have a picnic on some train tracks or took the movie Inception too seriously. Now, a fall of 10m is likely to cause spinal damage, which, on the pain scale, is a 10. So using completely infallable logic and totally correct science and stuff, that is the same as pulling a bandaid off a wound 10 times. So one train has the Potential Pain Energy of 2 million bandaids. That's a lot of bandaids. 

Governments are not blind to this issue. If anything they go a little bit overboard in delivering public safety advertisements in this respect. These are some of my favorite posters

I haven't always been aware of the astronomical damage that trains can cause. Trains used to be adventurous, a great mechanical feat of mankind. Whenever my parents drove parallel to a train on the highway I'd urge them to try and beat it. Travelling faster than a train was an accomplishment worthy of infinite glory. 

Unfortunately the good times were about to come to an end.


My grandparents were in town, which was a reasonably rare occurrence and they, in their infinite wisdom, thought would be funny buy me a big picture-book called 'DISASTERS'. Inside were detailed accounts of man-made tragedies; the Hindenburg, Titanic, The Black Plague, The Tay Bridge Disaster. They were all accompanied by super-dramatic artistic interpretations of the events as they unfolded.

One picture stood out. It was a picture of a burning army supply train which had derailed and caught fire after its brakes failed when going down a hill. 300 German soldiers died horrifically, some burning to death, some dying on impact. Suddenly I was hit with the realisation that trains aren't safe, that they can break down, they can derail, they catch on fire, they can run over people and squish their innards out like a rolled up tube of toothpaste! From that moment on I've been scared of trains. 

Even Thomas wasn't safe from the deceptions of my paranoid 10 year old mind.

And that's why I'm afraid of them. Them and their mysterious "Gap". "Beware the Gap" they say. What's wrong with the gap? What's down there, between the train and the platform, that we need to be afraid of? Are there ghosts? Do evil monkeys wait down there, hoping to snatch an unsuspecting infant or chomp on some careless limb?  What do they do with all those empty chip packets? Do they still have my little matchbox beamer from '97? What will it take for them to give it back?

Regardless, Trains are frightening. You should all stay away from them.

LIES

ly-ing:

-adjective: deliberately untruthful; false, misleading:

ie: I don't know how all that eggplant got under my bed

OR

No, I didn't eat all of the yoghurt in the fridge with no consideration for anyone elses desire to eat yoghurt.

Lying can be a difficult topic for some people. Misleading people can have undesired effects and often tend to the downfall of the "liar". Fortunately for me, I've developed a form of early warning system which acts as a damage control placement in my brain.

This, of course, is balanced out by all those times when I do know what I'm talking about and people don't believe it.

 ... 

Sorry, I'm doing it again.