Through Different Eyes

I am one of those people who finds rail travel romantic.  Yes, I know.  Train travel is not necessarily the fastest way to get between point A and B, and often times rail travel across country can be darn right unreliable (someday I'll relate my travels on Amtrak's Desert Wind...I know unreliable).  But there is something magical about the train that transforms the view out the window. 

While I've seen it happen in many different ways, the most stunning was at the end of one of my most recent trips.  I was sitting in the train as it rolled into the town that I had grown up in.  Along the south side of the train, a four lane unlimited access highway dotted with big box stores and restaurants, a mall and a junior high school, and church after church paralleled the train tracks.  I'd traveled this road many times.  I could probably drive it blindfolded and not miss a light or turn into the wrong parking lot.  But somehow, looking out the window, I saw my old stomping ground through new eyes.  By moving north 100 feet and elevating myself, my hometown looked as new and foreign to me as had Cumberland, Maryland and Martinsburg, West Virginia had earlier in my trip. 

Strangely, I was reminded of this while I was sitting in my seat at a pre-season Colts game this evening.  I was sitting behind a family of Packers fans (though they all professed to be Colts fans second).  The family consisted of mom, dad, a boy of about 8 and a girl of about 10.  Unlike many of the other opposing team fans I've had the "pleasure" to sit with, this family was polite and friendly, and their enjoyment of the game and their enthusiasm was very clear.  Maybe the reason that they were so polite and friendly was because this was a pre-season game and the outcome didn't matter.  But that's also what makes their enjoyment and enthusiasm so unique.

Where most people see pre-season games as a chore, something to attend so tickets, either their own or their friend's,don't go unused, this family enjoyed this for what it was:  an opportunity to see their favorite team in a beautiful stadium under the star-spangled sky with their family. 

A couple of years ago, I took my neighbor girl (a self-professed Jaguars fan) to the first pre-season game played in Lucas Oil Stadium.  I was prepared to take her to the game, watch through the first half and head home.  But it became obvious from the moment we parked that she was enthralled.  Her eyes were wide as we went into the stadium.  She cheered for every third string player that got on the field.  She thought the stadium hot dog was gourmet food and she refused to leave until the clock read triple zeros after the fourth quarter had been played.  On our way out, she drug her feet, agonized over just the right souvenir to purchase that would remind her of her first NFL game.

And throughout the night, she showed me what it was like to be a kid again, by seeing things through her eyes.

I can't for us to discover the world again by looking through our child's eyes, where everything old and familiar becomes new again.