Valhalla

I fell asleep on the train coming home the other night, as unfamiliar station names breezed by. On a weekend, the last train out of Grand Central leaves at 1:56 am and I had already passed on that to continue hanging out in the city. Normally I would have crashed at a friend's but I was wide awake and thought I might as well go back to Scarsdale since the next train was only twenty minutes away.

Late night revelers packed the 5:39 train and by the time I woke up and hurriedly jumped off, at least half the other riders were passed out too. I had missed my stop by three exits and for a minute I thought about just walking home, forgetting that the Metro North stops are miles apart. My iPhone battery was on life support so calling a cab was out of the question.

I guess this is what an adventure is, if I were in a foreign country. But when you're not travelling, this sort of mistake is just an inconvenience. Luckily all I had to do was stand on the opposite side of the tracks and wait for a return train. Another guy had groggily gotten off the train also, and we exchanged confused information before settling in for cigarettes and conversation.

Turns out he's from Ireland and was studying at NYU. His family runs a printing shop near Dublin and he had come out to get a masters degree. We talked a bit about what it means to take over your father's company, to follow in their footsteps. He said he enjoyed most of it and liked the closeness of working with family. I asked him what he thought the hardest part was so far. He said it was that his dad didn't have a succession plan. Like when he died that's when it would pass on, but until then, his dad was in charge.

I think my dad had a semi-succession plan. In the summer of 2001, he came out to New York and picked me up on the way to Boston for a business trip. I was a year out of school and not really doing anything, and my dad pretty much said as much. This was the only time I'd ever been invited for anything business related.

We toured a manufacturer he was planning to partner with. At the end of the trip, as he dropped me back off in Jersey City, he said that maybe this new deal was something I could help him out with. "Sure," I said. "Whatever you want." We didn't talk much more about it. I think he was waiting to see if I would ask/find myself.

Well, now I'm asking.

At the end of our train ride, after an hour of waiting and hopping from the express to the local, I asked my acquaintance how he stayed happy -- living far away from home, without friends around, taking a long train ride into the city for a few drinks. It felt weird to ask a stranger that.

His response, "Why, don't I look happy to you?"