Tall tales

[nightdog_barks]

He remained on the footbridge, taking childish -- or boyish -- pleasure in the polished rails pointing away in both directions into the silence. As a child he had once stood on a larger bridge with his father waiting for a train to come through. Stephen had stared at the receding lines and had asked why they grew together as they got farther away. His father looked down at him, eyes narrowed, mock serious, and then squinted into the distance where question and answer converged. He always seemed to be standing at attention. He was holding Stephen's hand, their fingers were interlaced. His were stubby, with matted black hair across the knuckles. In games he used to move his fingers scissorlike, clamping Stephen's till the boy danced with agony and delight at such irresponsible power. Stephen's father looked from the horizon to explain that trains got smaller and smaller as they moved away, and that to accommodate them the rails did the same. Otherwise there would be derailments. Shortly after that an express shook the bridge as it shot beneath their feet. Stephen marveled then at the intricate relation of things, the knowingness of the inanimate, the deep symmetry that conspired to narrow the rail's gauge precisely in keeping with the train's diminishment; no matter how fast it rushed, the rails were always ready.

From Ian McEwan's The Child in Time, page 34

I read this last night and laughed out loud for real. Omg dad.

Comments

[blackmare]

Ha, it reminds me of the series of Calvin & Hobbes comics in which Calvin’s Dad Explains Things, such as how old photos are in black and white because the whole world was like that at the time. :-D

[nightdog_barks]

YES THAT IS IT EXACTLY. Lol, I had forgotten about Calvin's dad, but that is it. And I wondered at the time if this was a "real" story, that Ian McEwan's father had told him this when Ian was a small child, and from the Wikipedia description of the author's early life ... yep, Stephen's father in the book is pretty much Ian McEwan's father in real life.

Art, life, imitates. And all that. :D