Life on a Rail
Written January 20, 2005

This might sound weird, but what if life was the mine-train ride at a theme park?

First you get to line up. The line isn’t too long – mostly everyone is trying to get on the upside-down pirate ship – but nonetheless, you’re stuck waiting for an earthly vessel to carry you into mortality. Waiting sucks, and some bastard kid spills his ice cream on your shoes. Kicking his face would mean an instant trip back to the Blazing Prong-pokes of Hell, and you’ve already tried that ride today, so you clench your teeth and tough it out.

Finally an empty cart arrives and you hop in. You don’t get to choose your vessel – they come in all sizes, colours, conditions and genders. Before you can figure out how a mine cart can possibly be gendered, you’re off, rattling down the dark, dark track. Pow! You burst through a set of gore-encrusted curtains, into the light, and a poorly-animated mechanical doctor tries to smack your ass. You dodge deftly. Childbirth is gross!

Now that you can see, you check out your cart more thoroughly. Hurrah! Your vessel is cracker-white: you’re the over-privileged majority! Furthermore, the track you’re on appears to be headed towards the forest of neon crucifixes that mark the North American Status Quo section of the ride. Life is going to be sweet. You note with satisfaction that the ice cream kid is going to the jungles of the Third World .

Your cart trundles down the relatively coddled path of childhood and the public school system. Somebody throws gum in your hair. You nap for a bit and consequentially never learn how to distinguish “their” from “there”, but that’s cool. Don’t worry about it.

There are a few branching passages along the way that look interesting, but your cart sticks doggedly to the rail. High school is next, and you choose the Stereotypical Goth route. Now you hate Jesus and love Trent Reznor! You write terrible poetry about the black void in your soul. A robotic arm drops a rusty butter-knife into your cart so you can chop up your wrists at your leisure. It’s not as fun as it sounds.

Whew, that was close. You made it out, barely, and you’re totally sick of being a lame-o goth. In hindsight, you should’ve chosen Trendy Preppie instead. The track splits in several directions here, but the obvious choice is post-secondary education: it has the shiniest rails. Shiny means good, right? Although what about that path over – WHOA!

Before you know it, you’re speeding into the kaleidoscopic acid-trip of university life. In between bong hits and Century Club, it’s time to choose a major. Science? Too icky. Liberal arts? Nah, poverty doesn’t seem too appealing. Business? Just right! The time passes quickly, too quickly, and suddenly you’re wearing a robe and a silly little hat with a tassle, clutching an ornate piece of paper.

A vast network of track spreads out before you now, an ocean of rails twisting and winding into the distance. You see countless places you’ve always wanted to go, things you’ve always wanted to try. But it’s getting so much harder to control your cart. It seems to have taken on a life of its own, forging ahead quickly on the brightest rail of all.

You shrug and lay back. Changing course seems far too difficult. As you trundle down the arrow-straight route, the surrounding side tracks begin to amble away, almost regretfully, one by one.

Before you, a great city begins to rise. The black spires of skyscrapers puncture the horizon, tearing holes in the clouds. Rows upon rows of identical houses, each with a white picket fence and 2.5 kids, blot the landscape in spotless fields of suburbia. As far as you can see, the solitary rail you’re riding continues endlessly into the distance, never winding, never ambling once. The rest of your life awaits.

And as the monolith grows and your career approaches, you can’t help but wonder: are you here on purpose, or because this happened to be the simplest route?

I think I've been writing a bit too pessimistically lately. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I've stopped being a columnist and started in on pure nihilism.

I DO like the idea of life as a series of tracks and interchanges, however. It seems that things happen a bit too formulaically in our society, that people just shuffle from one section to the next without ever making conscious decisions about where their life will take them. School to high school to post-secondary school to work, repeat as needed. I think that the point of this column was to get people to re-examine this cycle, to consider whether it's really the existence they crave.