Is it a plane?
Last Saturday it was such a lovely day here in the Netherlands that Oh Patient One and I decided to get the train to Utrecht and play tourist. On the train there was an odd graphic on the door between our carriage and the next, so, of course, I decided to take a photo of it. Just for fun. Here it is. . .
I’m referring to the little figure with its arms outstretched with a red line through it. Obviously it was telling us not to do something, but what was that something? And might we do it without realizing and get dragged off to The Hague and thrown into prison for ever and ever and ever? Oh noes!
To entertain ourselves on the journey Oh Patient One and I came up with some possibilities.
1. No flying on the train (yes, we’re talking to you, Superman).
2. No emotive holding-out-of-arms while singing on the train. I’m all in favor of that, except if it happens to be Robert Plant doing the singing (sigh, I share that with Emma from 32AA – he really is one of my gods among men).
3. No hugging? I mean, that could represent a person in a pre-hug position. But the Dutch are good at hugging. And kissing. They kiss each other on alternate cheeks three times when greeting or saying goodbye to friends or family members. So it couldn’t be the hugging thing.
4. No karate on the train?
5. No holding out of arms while walking through the door to the next carriage? That kind of made sense, we don’t want people breaking their arms, or something, while walking through a door. But obviously this was a bit worrying – do people really need to be reminded not to do this? Then I thought about the time I was doing research for Confessions of a Serial Dater and discovered that some people need to be reminded not to iron their clothes while wearing them (it’s true!).
So we puzzled, and we puzzled, and we puzzled. Then we puzzled some more. When the train inspector arrived to check our tickets, we asked him, and guess what he told us?
It means no standing on the train.
I broke that rule taking the photo in the first place. Oh, well, I was obviously born to be a rebel!
Edit for clarity: The inspector meant, of course, no standing on the train while it is in motion.
Michelle the Rebel 
Have you seen Robert Plant lately??!!?? I totally get what you mean if you’re talking about some of those concert videos from back in the day, but these days, somebody looks a little rode hard and put away wet.
They do say that love is blind, though . . .