The Railway Crossing

‘A train passes here at 95 miles an hour at these times, whether you’re on the tracks or not.’ And then there was a list of times. Derek read the sign with some amusement and then as a secondary thought, checked his watch. It was 3.20pm. He looked up at the sign again and noticed that the closest time was 3.30pm.

I wonder if these times are accurate, he asked himself and then was startled by a voice from the car behind him. He turned.

“Dad, dad, aren’t you going to come back?” It was his 12-year-old son, Jeremey. He smiled and waved to his car which had not only his son in it, but his 10-year-old daughter, Agnes and his wife, Jennifer. He looked back at the sign and then returned to the car. He got into the driver’s seat, closed the door and looked at his wife. She wasn’t looking at him but instead into the distance, way beyond the railway crossing.

“It’s 3.20pm,” he began,

“3.21,” his wife corrected him.

“I’m sorry,” he replied with a slight bow of his head and then continued. “The sign states that a train goes by here at certain times of the day, whether there’s someone……..”

“At 95 miles an hour,” interrupted Jennifer, and again Derek nodded his head. He was about to begin again when Jennifer continued, “yes Derek. The sign is big enough for a cow to read it from a 100 yards away.” No, it wasn’t worth correcting Jennifer, decided Derek. But instead he took the more diplomatic approach.

“I’m sorry, I forgot you can read the sign from back here.”

“Can we go now, dad?” asked his son Jeremey repeated by Agnes his daughter.

“We’re hungry!” they both added together. Derek glanced at his watch before he answered. He didn’t want to be corrected by his wife again.

“Well, it’s 3.32,” he said, “why don’t we stay here another 8 minutes,” and then corrected himself when he saw that Jennifer was about to say, now 7 minutes, “to see whether a train really does go by at these times.” The other three occupants of the car just rolled their eyes. They were used to their father and his Germanic precision. ‘If you say something is supposed to be done at such and such hour, I expect it to be done at such and such an hour,’ became part of his personality ever since he was a child. Derek was born on Tuesday December 31 at 11.59pm, much to his parent’s delight. It meant that he became a tax deduction for the year. There was a little confusion though when they originally were given the birth certificate on which the officials had marked January 1, at 12.01am.

“No, that’s not right. It was December 31. We were there.” They both objected. But the official did what most officials do, and that was dispute their assertions. Finally, exasperated, Derek’s father hauled the doctor in front of the officials after threatening to sue them in every court in the land. The doctor corroborated the time he had written on the form which had been arbitrarily changed by the official. The time was then changed back to the delight of his parents. Anyway, it was from then on, that Derek became obsessed with being punctual.

There had been many an occasion when Derek first started his insurance business that he had made an appointment to see a potential client at their home at a particular time. He would get there early, drive past the house to make sure he had the right location and then go around the corner and sat. About a minute before the agreed upon time, he would drive up to the house. Prospective clients marvelled at his precision and Derek swore that it was because of that precision, that he got plenty of business.

“If he thinks that much about time, I’m sure he would be extra careful with our money,” was the common refrain. And it was true. Derek after 20 years had grown it into a sizeable business, with more coming in every day. Punctuality was also something he ground into in his children and his employees. The only one who refused to bend to his way of thinking, was Jennifer. Jennifer was a wonderful mother and a great lawyer, but a horrible timekeeper. She didn’t see the benefit of being on time everywhere. She felt that using what was around her as an excuse as to why she was late, was not unprofessional. There was always heavy traffic on her way to a meeting. She really didn’t care whether her client felt she was making it up or not, because she was a crackerjack attorney who commanded very high fees in return for producing great results for her clients. And because of that, she felt she was in the driver’s seat, so to speak. The results showed with the children as well. Their homework was never late. The dog was always fed on time. The cat litter was sifted and renewed each morning, before they departed for school and their beds were made. Marvelled by no one though, because no one outside the Jenkin household knew of this trait. Their schoolteachers however were always impressed that their students’ homework was always done and immaculately presented. They had never used the age old excuse of the dog ate my homework. There was one exception and that was when the cat peed on Jeremey’s homework believing that the paper lying on the table was her litter box. But after the pages were dried and being that the homework was written using a ball point pen, it was presented. The teacher didn’t think much of the discoloured pages, because she knew her student was the best.

A week prior to where they were at the railway crossing, Derek had a wonderful idea of going on a trip into the nearby desert and dig for dinosaur bones. The trip was greeted enthusiastically by the children, but not by Jennifer who had to explain to her clients that she was going to be incommunicado for about a week. “I don’t believe there’s an internet connection in the desert,” she told them. Her clients panicked momentarily. But once she assured them that this was a family trip arranged by her husband for the benefit of their children and dubbed educational, they assented and thought it was about time that Jennifer went on a vacation, especially a family vacation.

“It’s 3.31,” shouted the children from the back seat of the car, noting the time on the clock on the dashboard.

“No,” corrected Derek, “that clock is about 1 minute fast.”

“No it isn’t,” replied Jennifer pointing to her expensive Apple watch, a gift from a very appreciative client who she managed to get off from a horrible customer complaint. And just as she did that, a train horn sounded in the distance making all four of them jump. Then as they turned their attention to the direction of the horn, a freight train came flying past them.

“You’re 2 minutes late!” shouted Derek, “that’s made us 2 minutes late for our rendezvous.”

“We’re going on a rendezvous?” asked Jeremey.

“With whom?” added Agnes.

“No one,” replied Jennifer smiling at the children, “that’s just your dad. He always has to have the last word.”