Again, it happens…
I at work at Disneyland, driving the Steam Locomotive, and we are stopped at Main Street Station for another two or three minutes before we leave. My fire is under control, and I’ve got plenty of water in the boiler, so I can stand at the edge of the tender and wave to the thousands of people going under the bridge since fireworks just ended.
It really is just a sea of faces as they walk under the railroad bridge, and I’m not waving to anyone in particular, when I hear someone calling my name "Dave! Dave!" I start scanning the crowd, and see two people with a stroller and a couple of kids waving and looking at me. I can’t tell who it is because it’s kind of dark and distant, and I don’t quickly recognize them… why? Because they are Peter and Teresa… friends of friends that I know from Seattle… but – I haven’t seen or talked to them in YEARS!
Apparently, Katherine had told them that I was working on the trains at Disneyland, but really – what are the chances that I would be sitting on THAT train at THAT time when they were walking out – AND – that they would recognize me after so many years – AND in a locomotive engineers costume?! If we would have left thirty seconds earlier, they wouldn’t have seen me… or if I had been in the cab tending to the boiler, they wouldn’t have seen me… I could have been talking to a conductor, or in the station getting a drink of water… anything… It is funny how this stuff happens…