Memory & Maturity

Cars, trains, dinosaurs. They’re all in everyone’s childhood at some point.

When I was young, I owned a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine toys. One, of the many, was a figurine of the Fat Controller character. Suited, top hatted, able to sit but didn’t bend at the elbows or knees and about the size of an adult’s pinkie finger.

My brother meanwhile, six years my elder, had a Hornby trainset set complete with engine, carriages and a train station platform. Its limited amount of track subjected the unfortunate passengers to a circuitous – even repetitive – route. Both brothers cherished their toys but only I was the envious one. No matter how much track I had for Thomas the Tank Engine, no matter how many route combinations I concocted with smatterings of Brio and LEGO, my brother’s trains moved on their own, not forced into submission under my small hands. They were alive and so they were superior.

Hence my excitement, should my brother offer a train ride to my Fat Controller figurine. Not taking into account the Fat Controller was taller than the carriage itself and to fit inside either the train would need bits removed, or he would. I would hand over the Fat Controller and my brother would say he, the Fat Controller, just needed to go down the platform stairs and onto the train. At this point I am asked to look away while my brother arranged the finest compartment, not to look back until I am permitted.

The train would pull out of the station at the start of its short journey which could only ever bring it back to the point at which it began. My eyes followed it keenly, watching for even the slightest glimpse of my Fat Controller toy, peering out of the window. I would always ask “Where is he?” and would always be answered “At the front, behind the curtains.” Sometimes there’d be an addition of “with his feet up” or “enjoying the journey” but always in first class, behind the curtains. My brother wouldn’t dare ask “You can see him, can’t you?” Illusions hang by a thin thread, after all. 

The Fat Controller would enjoy a few circuits, ten at best. My brother was trying to capture and keep the attention span of a child, after all. I would look away again for the Fat Controller to disembark and looked back to have him returned to me. Smiling, as always. Thus I would return across the landing to my own small world, one rather more chaotic than the one behind, and release the Fat Controller back into an environment more his size and literally built with him in mind.

Nearly twenty years have passed. The Hornby set is in my brother’s old cupboard, gathering dust and no doubt heading past the point of actually working. The same can be said in regards to my Thomas the Tank Engine paraphernalia, now stored in its new location of a dustier, mustier attic. My childhood memories are growing mouldy. All I have left are these partially recollected stories and the time to think, for the this is the first time between then and now that I have remembered this occurrence.

For instance, I have had the opportunity to ponder just how my brother kept the Fat Controller hidden from me. Initial ideas suggested the technique was to stow the Fat Controller underneath the hollow, plastic train station platform. I compliment my brother’s ability to lift up the platform and hide the Fat Controller quickly and quietly.

However even that could be over-complicating things. The simple fact of the matter is the Fat Controller could have been in a pocket or behind my brother’s back, somewhere easy to reach but unseen to my naive eyes.

And I believed. With every cell of my tiny, untarnished brain I believed my oversized and impossible toy was inside that train, enjoying a ride which wasn’t manual, wasn’t overshadowed or roughened by my small hand pushing him along. Part of me still wants to believe it: “in first class, behind the curtains.” It is cruel and unnecessary to think and realise the truth, but the path to adulthood is lined with these ugly revelations. Such as the fact my favourite toy was not having fun and in a new life of luxury, however briefly. He was alone, in the dark, hidden from view. Not sipping drinks with the world whizzing past the windows, instead lying and waiting for the daylight to come back, somewhere between both the world he knew and the one he was promised.

It is a sad moment when we grow old enough to peer over the walls of lies our elders built for us, regardless of any good intentions which went into the foundations. The Easter Bunny isn’t real. There is no Tooth Fairy. So many letters to Santa lost in the mail. Maturity is learning that whimsy and wonder is not hidden behind the curtains in first class. Wonder is not something which will only appear as soon as the eyes are closed or the head is turned.

Instead, we learn something better. We learn that wonder is a commodity, which our parents and siblings created and sold to us: their willing and gullible audience. They were in control, they were in the know. But by cycle of the generations, the responsibility drops a level and falls to us. Now we get to tell the stories, choose the truths and build beliefs. The days are over when we sat with wide eyes, enraptured, taking our elders’ words as gospel. Now the words are our own.

Now, it’s our turn.