All aboard the Wayne train

Have you ever watched America’s Got Talent and thought, “Wow, that’s really impressive. How on earth did you ever get to be so good at such an obscure thing?” I feel this way about many people… partly because there aren’t that many things that I’m particularly good at, but largely because there are many people out there who put a lot of effort into strange things.

I work with a man named Wayne. Wayne is a collector. One of the things he collects are model trains and their associated accessories. Every year around this season, he sets everything up in his basement, his wife puts out some cookies and punch, and they invite people to an open house viewing the train set up. There are also small plastic figures of many famous fictional (like Roy Rogers) and non-fictional (like Donald Duck) people. Part of the experience involves a scavenger hunt to find many of the various characters. Unfortunately, Wayne grew up in a time with a completely different set of famous people, so I didn’t know who half of them were. Also, he doesn’t have the Lady Gaga action figure as part of his collection yet.