The boy, perhaps six-years-old, hopped on to the train with his grandfather. They sat down across from me, and the older man couldn’t get the boy to sit still.
The boy left his school backpack with his grandfather and ran up and down the carriage saying he wanted to be a train driver. He had memorised the words to all the pre-recorded messages on our branch of London’s Northern Line, and he would shout out the names of the stops and warn people to ‘mind the gap’.
As I hopped off at my stop, I could still hear the boy shouting the all the words to the automated messages in the carriage speakers. The boy’s unbridled excitement and showmanship was a bright spot in my commute home. I loved how his grandfather didn’t dampen the boy’s spirit or action. He let him be.