Naomi the Wordsmith

The story really is the way the headline tells it. This is not clickbait and genuinely happened. My mum and a wonderful train guard can vouch for this strange story.

It started like this.

We were on a packed train heading to – somewhere I don’t remember. This happened about 15 years ago. I was a 10 year old kid.

It was so crowded that my mum couldn’t sit with me. So I was in my wheelchair in the wheelchair space, watching the landscapes blur with the speed of the train as it rolled onwards through the countryside.

Landscapes that looked something like this.

I barely noticed it at first.

The train had stopped and as people were getting on, one guy saw that the luggage rack was full. He glanced over towards me and put his suitcase at my feet.

A little rude. And also a bit dangerous, because the suitcase blocked my wheelchair so I couldn’t actually move. But sometimes people are rude when you’re travelling. It’s just something you deal with.

But it kept happening. At every station more passengers would get on, see the full luggage rack, and add to the growing pile of suitcases at my feet.

Then people started piling up their luggage to the left of me. So I couldn’t watch the landscapes blurring by anymore.

I tried to see my mum, but a pile of luggage was in the way. I didn’t know what to do.

At the next station a pile of people come aboard, dumping yet another pile of luggage, this time on the table in front of me.

I was literally boxed in a suitcase prison. The luggage towered over me, threatening to crash down on me whenever the train teetered around a curve on the tracks.

I started to cry.

People peered over the suitcase ramparts down at me, making eye contact, before reinforcing them with their own bags.

Tears streaming down my face, I kept trying to think what to do. But there’s not really any social code for what to do when people are entrapping you in luggage.

The luggage tower was so high now that the next man peering down had to have been on tiptoe.

It was the train guard.

“You don’t seem very happy, down there, do you? I don’t think I would either. You’re so boxed in. Is your mum or dad travelling with you?”

“Yes, my mum. She’s sitting at the other end of the carriage.”

“I’ll go find her. Well, first, I’ll take the ones at the top off because I don’t want them to fall on you … okay, I’m going to find her now. Back in a minute. It’s only going to be a minute, I promise.”

In less than a minute, there’s two faces peeping down at me – my mum and the guard.

I start to stop crying.

“Right,” says the guard. “I’m going to make an announcement and get all this luggage off you.”

I can’t see him anymore, but I hear him speaking over the tannoy. My mum tells me he was addressing everyone in the carriage.

“If you own any of these suitcases, you’ll need to take them now.”

No one gets up. Everyone looks blank and ignores him.

The guard is getting really rather annoyed now. “No one owns these? Really? Well, next time the train stops, I’ll have to move them off the train then.”

Still no one moves. I think they thought he was bluffing.

The train stops at the next platform. The guard again says, “Anyone who owns any of these suitcases MUST take them now. This is not the appropriate way to store them.”

The passengers make eye contact with him, staring him down, as if daring him to do it.

He does it.

One by one he grabs the suitcases from the piles towering over me and hurls them onto the platform. Thud after thud as they keep landing.

I start to see the world again. And I see a mad rush as the passengers surge to reclaim their bags, from the platform, and from the piles surrounding me. They may have made eye contact with me as they imprisoned me, but none did so now.

The piles were so massive that it takes about ten minutes for me to be fully liberated from the suitcase prison.

Now it’s done, the guard makes a final announcement, this time to the entire train.

“So sorry for the ten-minute delay. The rude passengers in carriage 7 had entrapped a ten year old child in a wheelchair with their luggage and it took us some time to free her. Please be aware that it is NOT the fault of the child but the full grown, adults who chose to do such a thing.”

Karma is real indeed and the proof is in the train guards who check our tickets and make sure I’m safe travelling.

I’ll leave you with one thought – next time you see a train guard on a journey, maybe thank them for the work they do.