First Published on Queen Serene (now private) in September 2007.

One of the royal heirs once asked why the King and I married each other. (Why this came into question, I’m not sure”“a number of possibilities come to mind). My answer: Because both of us are the same kind of weird.

It’s a fact. I’ve never met a person as weird as I am, in all (okay, most) of the same ways. For those of you with an interest in such things, I have a menagerie of examples I could offer to underscore this truth, but today there’s one at the tiptop of my frontal lobe: The Stationmaster.

The Stationmaster is a plastic figurine, about 4 inches tall, that came as part of the Sir Topham Hat Playset we bought for Ben in his preschool days of yore, when he lived and breathed anything related to Thomas the Tank Engine. (For the benefit of the unenlightened, Sir Topham Hatt is the portly, vest-wearing head honcho of the Sodor Railway, where Thomas and his friends are gainfully employed.)  Rather than provide Lady Topham Hat as the Sir’s playset companion, the fine folks at Brit Allcroft, Inc. included the Stationmaster instead (the implications of which I’d rather not ponder). 

I can’t remember exactly when or where or how the Stationmaster first wove his way into the incontestably weird fabric of my marriage. But at one point, approximately ten years ago, one of us tucked him in an unlikely spot”“a spot where the other would inevitably discover him”“as a way of saying hello. And the one who found him returned the favor. And a tradition was born.

Since then, the Stationmaster has appeared at various and sundry occasions, sometimes within a few days or weeks of his last appearance, sometimes after a year or more of biding his time.

Here are just a few of the many places he’s turned up:
In the car (taped to the steering wheel) 
Under a pillow
Inside a coat pocket
In a mailing envelope (it got delivered by the USPS to the King’s office)
In the freezer
Inside a shoe
On a sign post (the stop sign at the end of our cul-de-sac”“the King walked past it for at least a week without noticing)

My very favorite Stationmaster placement was when I tucked the little vinyl guy inside the King’s roast beef sandwich. Needless to say, it ruined his lunch (he nearly barfed when he chomped on that leg), but it was good for a laugh (still is). The King swore revenge. A year or so later, after a neighbor-friend delivered the Stationmaster to me along with a baby blanket she’d made to welcome our fourth-born, the King confessed that his original plan was to have the obstetrician literally deliver the Stationmaster as part of the afterbirth scenario.

Let’s just say that it was wise of him to reconsider.  

Two years ago I buried the Stationmaster in the King’s candy dish at work (very slick of me”“can you imagine his co-worker’s bewilderment when she pulled out a little blue man instead of a Tootsie Roll?) As the months passed I wondered from time to time when he would reappear, and as even more months passed I went searching for him in my usual hiding places, thinking that perhaps the King had already passed him back to me and I had forgotten (not a rare event these days). I didn’t want to break the rule of silence by asking the King, but finally, as I reached a state of near-panic over the possibility of having lost this token of our marital harmony, I gave in, and was assured that our old friend was in good hands.

And then, on Friday, I reached into my purse after a delightful impromptu marital lunch date and found him, nestled amongst my keys and gum and chapstick, smiling benignly as he always has. And I laughed as I drove home, and I laughed as I emailed the King to congratulate him on his fine return. And when he called me a minute later we laughed together, revelling in the delicious glory of weirdness shared.