El arte de perder un tren (The art of missing a train)
MCER C1443 palabras
I have missed exactly one train in my life that mattered, and I have been dining out on it ever since. The 07:42 to the coast left, as advertised, at 07:42. I arrived at 07:43, which under any humane system of justice ought to count as arriving. The train disagreed. It is one of the very few institutions in this country that do precisely what they promise, and I resent it deeply for choosing that particular morning to prove the point.
What follows is a short and violent period of grief. There is the sprint along the platform, performed for an audience of nobody, in which I explain to a departing rear window that I would have made it if physics had been arranged more generously. There is the standing still. There is the reading of the departures board three separate times, with the face of someone checking a lottery ticket that has already lost. And then the board says what it was always going to say: the next one is at 09:50, and the intervening two hours are mine.
This is the part nobody warns you about. Two hours is too much to waste and not nearly enough to go home, so it arrives like a gift I did not order and cannot send back. My first instinct is always to fill it. Out comes the laptop. I answer three emails that could comfortably have waited a decade. I design, in considerable detail, a system of alarms and safety margins that will guarantee this never happens again, and that I will have abandoned by Thursday afternoon.
Then, somewhere around the fortieth minute, the resistance gives way. I buy a coffee I do not need and drink it slowly, which in my case counts as a spiritual accomplishment. I watch a stranger argue with a vending machine and lose. I read an entire newspaper, including the weather at sea and a long column about tomatoes, and discover that I hold views on tomatoes. Nothing whatsoever happens. It is magnificent.
I would like to end with a lesson, since that is the shape these pieces are meant to take. The difficulty is that the lesson would have to be 'miss more trains', and I have tested it. Missing a train on purpose does not work at all; the hours stay stubbornly ordinary. They only open up when they are taken from you against your will, which makes the whole thing impossible to recommend and is, I suspect, the only reason it is worth anything. So I shall go on setting the alarms. And I shall go on, roughly twice a year, arriving at 07:43.
Palabras que quizá no conozcas
- to dine out on somethingvivir de una anécdota, contarla una y otra vez
- as advertisedtal y como estaba anunciado
- to resentguardar rencor a
- griefduelo, pena
- sprintcarrera corta a toda velocidad
- departingque se está marchando
- departures boardpanel de salidas
- interveningque queda en medio
- safety marginmargen de seguridad
- to give wayceder, venirse abajo
- vending machinemáquina expendedora
- to hold views ontener opinión formada sobre
- stubbornlytercamente, con obstinación
Preguntas
Se contestan con el texto delante. No es memoria: es entender.
What is ironic in the first paragraph?
The train did exactly what it had promised, and that is precisely the complaint — El tren salió a las 07:42, «as advertised», es decir, puntual. La broma está en el reproche: se le guarda rencor por cumplir su palabra justo esa mañana. Si el tren hubiera salido con retraso, no habría columna.
The text makes it clear that running along the platform changed nothing.
True — No lo dice con esas palabras, pero lo deja clarísimo: la carrera se hace «for an audience of nobody» y la explicación se le da a una ventanilla que ya se va. Correr no sirvió absolutamente de nada.
The system of alarms and safety margins will already have been abandoned by ___ afternoon.
Thursday — El chiste está en la fecha: el sistema que promete que esto no vuelva a pasar quedará abandonado «by Thursday afternoon». La hipérbole no está en el plan, sino en lo poco que dura.
What is the point of the phrase 'three emails that could comfortably have waited a decade'?
The work was not urgent at all, and the exaggeration is the joke — «A decade» es una hipérbole: nadie cree que unos correos esperen diez años. Lo que se admite, sin decirlo, es que ese trabajo no corría ninguna prisa y solo servía para no estar de brazos cruzados.
Drinking a coffee slowly is jokingly presented as a personal achievement.
True — Textual: «which in my case counts as a spiritual accomplishment». Es autoparodia: llamar «logro espiritual» a beberse un café despacio mide la poca costumbre que tiene de no hacer nada.
Why is the lesson 'miss more trains' rejected at the end?
Because the two hours only work when they are imposed, so the advice cannot be followed — Lo dice y lo justifica: perder el tren a propósito «does not work at all», porque las horas solo se abren cuando te las quitan «against your will». Por eso la columna acaba admitiendo que seguirá poniendo alarmas.