"Can I see your ticket?"
He is four, and shyly sweet. I hand it to him.
He opens the cardboard cover, turns it over, folds the flimsy paper back to the staple that holds the whole together.
"Now don't you tear that," says his dad.
"No," I say, smiling at his bright gaze. "If I don't have a ticket, they'll throw me in the caboose!"
A flicker of confusion.
"The caboose?"
"Yep, the caboose. And I'll have to shovel coal to pay my way home."
He smiles, not understanding, but knowing I'm toying with him.
I wish I could tell him what a caboose was, and why I'd shovel coal anyway, and that shovelling coal in a caboose would be pointless, and how shovelling coal could ever get me home.* But he, oblivious to my angst, smooths the ticket back against the cardboard cover, still smiling.
*Talking to children is a lot like talking to non-native English speakers much of the time.
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