"Nina," I asked, "Do you think anybody knows this is just a doll?"

"Nope!" she replied brightly. "It looks too real."

"But it doesn't move," I said.

"So?"

I got more than my share of strange looks. Look at me: holding a little girl's hand, carrying an apparent baby in front of me, and wearing a heavy backpack. People had to see that Nina couldn't possibly be my child... maybe that would make them think the baby wasn't either...

"Nina," I asked, "Do you think anybody knows this is just a doll?"

"Nope!" she replied brightly. "It looks too real."

"But it doesn't move," I said.

"So?"

After climbing what seemed an endless hill, we came to a large, old fashioned carosel. Nina wanted to get enough tickets to go around three times, so that's what we did, changing horses each time the carosel stopped. After we exited the ride, the baby cried, so we sat at a picnic table until it was done. Thankfully, Nina was hungry at that point. She managed to put away an amazing quantity of food and water. The pack was now a more manageable weight, so the walk to the pony ride wasn't too arduous.

After Nina took a few turns on the pony, we found a pretty field where I spread our blanket and rested. I set the doll between us, and rolled onto my back, with my arms behind my head. I felt so light after dropping all that weight. The doll cried again, this time for a half hour, but I didn't mind. It gave me an excuse to lie there on the blanket.

Nina peppered me with questions. Some she'd asked before, but didn't seem to remember. She wanted to know why I was a tomboy. Did I ever have a doll as a girl? Did I prefer baby dolls to Barbie dolls? How did I feel about stuffed animals? Did I ever have a canopy bed? Did I ever want one? Did I ever wish I was a princess? Could any girl be a princess?

I told her about Grace Kelly and how she became Princess Grace of Monaco.

"Wait," Nina objected. "She was a movie star and then a princess?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

Nina sounded disappointed. I couldn't understand why.

"It isn't fair! If she was just a girl, like any girl, then that would be interesting. But she was already a movie star!"

I think I got it. "She was already somebody special, so it wasn't — uh," I couldn't think of the word. Special? Romantic? No, not quite.

"Could someone — I mean just a regular girl — find out she was a princess? Like in The Princess Diaries?"

"I don't know, Nina. I never saw that movie."

"You NEVER saw it!?" she cried. "Never?"

"No," I said. "I could watch it with you sometime."

"Okay," she said. She sucked on her lower lip, thinking. After some silence, she said, "Were you always a tomboy?"

"As far back as I can remember," I sighed. Honestly, I was getting pretty tired of the "tomboy" topic.

"So you never went to ballet class?"

"Nope."

"Did you ever play house?"

"Nope."

"Did you have any dolls?"

"You asked me that already."

"Oh. Did you ever play with dolls?"

I thought for a minute. Maybe it would be good to say "yes" to something... but Nina didn't give me a chance.

"Did you ever see any Mary-Kate and Ashley movies?"

"Who? Oh, never mind. Nope."

"Were you ever a flower girl in a wedding?"

"Nope."

"Huh." Nina mulled this over. Or maybe she was trying to think of other typically girly things. The baby stopped crying, but Nina remained on her back, hands clasped behind her head, looking at the sky. She was chewing on the stem of a long spike of grass. I waited in silence. It was nice to be free from the questions for a while, so I left her to her thoughts. After about five minutes, she suddenly glanced at me and asked for water. Then we made our way to the Little Train.

One of Tierson Park's claims to fame is the Little Train. The ride takes twenty minutes, and the route is landscaped like a toy train's, with little buildings, depots, and scaled-down bridges and streams. The ticket line was rather long, but it moved quickly. Once we had our tickets, we waited in another line for the train.

In front of us was a mother with twin boys. They boys were probably about three years old, and cute, but very stocky — a pair of tiny juggernauts with curly blond hair. The mother was with her friend, another woman, who kept glancing at me. I never got a chance to tell her it's not a real baby because she never stopped talking.

We stood there for fifteen minutes before the train came, and in that time, the twins escaped three times. Each time it was the same: The boys stood on either side of the mother. One boy would run off to the left. The moment his mother would turn and grab him, the other boy would run off to the right.

The first time, some stranger caught the escaped twin and brought him back. The second and third times Nina stopped the boy before he could go anywhere. The poor, harassed mother thanked her each time.

The amazing thing was that her friend didn't move to help her and didn't stop talking, either!

Nina told me in a low voice, "When we get on the train, they have to sit in a closed car, because they're little. We can sit in an open car because we're bigger." She pointed out a sign that explained this policy.

In spite of that, and much to Nina's irritation, the women and the twins sat on the seats directly in front of us in one of the open cars.

"They're not supposed to!" she grumbled, but one of the boys turned and smiled at her, and she smiled back.

It was a fun little ride, and it was pretty relaxing, too. I set the pack between my feet, and held the baby on my lap. I looked up, and the mother's friend was watching me. She had taken a seat facing backward.

The twins were even more active on the train than they'd been on the ground. They kept squirming and wiggling and climbing everywhere. Their mother kept grabbing them and sitting them back down on either side of her. She was getting a bit desperate because they could easily slip out of the car. It was an almost constant struggle with no let-up. Again, the friend never thought to take one of the twins in hand!

At about the middle of the circuit, the train came to a big curve, and it tilted a little into the turn. The ground fell away from the tracks on that side, and the drop was littered with sticks and rocks. Imagine if one of the twins took a spill down there!

As if on cue, I looked up, and guess what was about to happen! The twin on the left was kicking and screaming, and the twin on the right was getting ready to make a break for it. He stood on the seat, and put his hands on the rail. The mother's friend kept talking, oblivious to the danger.

"He's gonna jump!" Nina cautioned, and just then the boy did a little experimental hop. I put my hand in front of him like a stop sign. I figured that if he knew he was watched, it would be enough to keep him in his seat.

It wasn't. He took two more little test jumps, and a third hop carried him right over the rail. I clutched at the front of his shirt with my right hand, and grabbed him from behind with my left. His momentum nearly pulled me over the side, so I braced my legs under the seat in front of me, and held on. I had a good grip on him, but I couldn't pull him in at first. For such a little kid, he was incredibly heavy.

It all happened in seconds.

While I was grabbing the boy, my doll popped off my lap and flew from the train. I didn't see it — I was so focused on the little boy — but the doll rolled down the hill, tumbling all the way to the bottom.

Several women started screaming, and the screams got all the little children crying. The train came to a stop, and the conductor went bounding breakneck down the hill, chasing what he thought was a baby.

I bent over the seat in front of me, and managed to haul the boy back onto his seat. His mother started crying, saying, "Thank you! Thank you! Oh, my goodness!" over and over. I had to hug myself, my arms hurt so much.

"Your doll went down the hill," Nina told me, and I looked down to see the conductor struggling towards us.

"That's mine," I called to him.

"Cripes!" he panted. "I thought the damn thing was real!"

Good thing it wasn't. The poor doll took a stick through its neck, and was dirty and pock-marked from the fall.

I sighed. It looked like I'd get an F in Home Ec.

© 2006, 2007 by Kaleigh Way