Boston is a nice place

Last Christmas (Christmas of 2011) Jack and I took a train ride to Denver Colorado to visit his sister, Karen, and snowboard with them.

To me, train rides were very classy and romantic, as I only saw them on classic movies. It represented movies like Holiday Inn and Thin Man. We spent more money to ride the train one way than to take a round trip flight, just to get the experience.

In reality, a train ride was a kind of social experience. Even if you stayed in your cart all day long, you still had to come out to the dining cart to eat your 3 meals. Since we were a couple and all of the tables were for parties of four, we shared a dining table with two other people in every meal.

That night we were riding into Salt Lake City, we shared the table with an older man and a middle-age woman who were sitting next to each other. We were all very polite, but Jack and I were not the most social people. The man who sat across from me were more talkative. As per usual, we all shared where we came from and where were going and our train riding experience. Jack and I usually told people how this was our very first train ride and we were very excited about our private cart. As the food came we went out of topics, so we started eating.

It was until we got our bills when we found out the man and the woman were not a couple, because they paid separately. I looked at the woman and said: "Boston is a nice place." She gave me a blank look and said: "Yes, Boston is a nice place." Then we went quiet again. The man picked up the topic, "Yes, Boston is nice. I went to school there." He told us a little about going to school in Boston, which I now forgot the details.

Back in our cart, Jack and I were reflecting on our dinner experience, and how quiet everyone was. I said: "Well, I contributed to the discussion, but nobody picked it up."

"How did you contribute to the discussion?" Jack asked curiously.

"I said, 'Boston is a nice place.'" I replied.

"Yeah, that. What was that all about?" Jack asked.

"Well, I said it because the woman was from Boston."

"No, she was from Baltimore." Jack said, and he couldn't stop laughing.