I remember this one time I cried when I was like 7...

I was just reading the Baltimore Sun online, because I'm bored out of my MIND in Bar-Bri class...I've been here ALL FUCKING DAY. (Note: This was started on July 2nd.)

And I was reading this article about Pigtown in Baltimore, and they mentioned Mt. Clare Junction, near the B&O Railroad.

They turned the junction into a shopping mall in 1987. At that time, (1987) I had a slight infatuation with trains. Yeah, it's embarrassing. Probably one of my last vestiges of dorky heterosexuality. But, if you think about it, there's something sort of awe inspiring about watching a steam locomotive... I think I really liked the fact that it was very visually busy - smoke belching from the smokestack, steam coming out of valves on top, the pistons working in intricate, repetitive harmony, noise from steam and wheels and bells and whistles. Anyhoo...

To promote the opening of this new mall, the Mt. Clare Junction Mall, the television ads showed a steam train roaring through an open field, with passenger cars in tow. Being seven, and retarded, I decided that this meant that the mall was giving away free steam train rides on their mall steam train. Because, you know, what mall doesn't stable a 1941 Allegheny Ironworks Locomotive, parked in the middle of the main concourse, that then pulls out of the mall, with cheering shoppers waving from the windows?

God, I was dumb as a sack of rocks.

I implored, IMPLORED my parents to take me to this new and magical mall with its train rides and attractive Children's Place apparel. They both eyed me quizzically and I remember both of them telling me that there wasn't a train that ran through the mall, giving rides, that it was only in the advertisement. But I was steadfast. I had seen that they were giving away rides on their train and we had. to. go. Had to go. I insisted and begged and pleaded, certain that my parents were absolutely wrong, and that on a regular schedule, a train departed the mall on joyrides, thundering through the golden fields of...Baltimore City?

So we went. And I was about to be taught a very valuable lesson in disappointment.

See, because Mt. Clare Junction on the B&O was where the first chartered common-carrier was founded in 1827 blah blah blah, and this mall was built adjacent to this. Therefore, the good people at the Rouse Company (that's probably who built the mall...they seem to have built every mall in Maryland...) decided that it would be cool to have a locomotive as the centerpiece of the mall.

Centerpiece. Not moving attraction.

My heart was in my throat as we drove up to the mall...which, incidentally, happened to be closed, anyway, as it was a summer Sunday evening. I was a very spoiled child, I guess, if my parents were willing to drive from Towson into Baltimore on some child's folly errand... But they did it to make me happy. Ultimately, it crushed me.

I was shattered as we approached the mall and I saw a ginormous locomotive sitting on tracks that went to nowhere, inside the mall. The locomotive hulked behind a locomotive-sized window...a window without hinges, meaning that it really was a window and not a door. And meaning that little me would not have my train ride.

The excitement of riding on this train was what had kept my tiny heart beating for the last week. This was more than I could bear! As my father puttered past the mall in our 1984 chocolate brown Toyota Corolla with brown plaid upholstery, I buried my little face in my little mitts and wept.

I'm pretty sure after that we went and got Ice Cream from Lee's in Harborplace. I probably got bubblegum flavored, which was pink and had gumballs in it. And I'm sure I was adorable eating ice cream with a tear-stained face, pouting about the train ride that never happened.

But it was a very valuable lesson: Advertisements are always lies, and my parents were always right about everything.