BELLA
dad, you going to tell a story now?

TROY
uhhm. sure. let me think of something. (few moments) how about a story about a snake?

BELLA
Yes!

ALEX
No! snakes be scary.

TROY
ok. how about one about a dog?

BELLA
Yes!

ALEX
no. dog's be scary too.

BELLA
alex. dog's aren't scary.

ALEX
yes they are.

TROY
what if it was a puppy?

ALEX
no.

TROY
ok. ok. how about a story about a train?

BELLA
no.

ALEX
yes. train. train's not scary.

BELLA
but trains are dumb.

ALEX (shouting)
trains are not dumb della!

TROY
bella. trains aren't dumb and there's really not a train in this story. so it's ok.

BELLA
ok. i guess, but i'd rather have a snake story.

TROY
i know. i know. ok. so here's my story. when i was about twelve years old, that's how old cousin emma is, we didn't have any plans one saturday so my mom said she wanted to take a short trip to visit a friend of hers. so we drove several hours to southern colorado and wound up in some very little town. it was super-tiny and there were no people or cars anywhere. we kinda got lost and were driving around trying to figure out where to go. we stopped at this intersection and mom was looking at a map when suddenly some loud bells started clanging and when we looked up to see what was making the noise a huge bar slammed onto the hood of our car. it seems we were sitting beneath a railroad crossing sign and the bar to stop traffic just fell. we quickly looked both ways but no train was coming and the bar on the other side of the road was still up so it seemed like this thing just went crazy for a minute. well here we are, sitting in middle of a deserted town with a huge bar on the hood of our car. mom sent me out to try to lift it a little but it was too heavy and i was too small.

BELLA
so what did you do?

TROY
well this town was seriously deserted and we hadn't seen anyone since we got there so mom, or grandma rather, just had to back up and let the bar scrape the hood of the car.

BELLA
and?

TROY
and what?

BELLA
is that it?

TROY
yeah. i guess so.

BELLA
that wasn't a train story.

TROY
well, it was kind of a train story. it was a story about train traffic guard.

BELLA
that doesn't count. now tell a train story.