Trains

Sometimes you just wish that a story had a certain beginning: we were starting the happiest part of our lives, the worst part of our lives was over, or maybe just a nice explosion. Because sometimes it is enjoyable to listen to the happy times, or to hear the story of an emergence from the dark, or for the brightness and intensity of an explosion, for no apparent reason. But that is why you continue the story, for the explanation.
Of course, it can be equally enjoyable to hear about the beginning of someone’s darkest time, or the end of the happiest time in someone’s life. I think the explosion is still viable here, but now you can pull back to either just before or just after the event, like science and the Big Bang. How? They ask. And when? But not why.
This story could be about a train, approaching a tunnel, or entering a tunnel, or in the tunnel, or emerging from the tunnel, or hitting something at any point, and exploding.
So this train has people on it, or it has cattle, oil, coal, products from China, or riders on It’s a Small World. The kids are happy or scared, the parents are restless, or humming. But before this they were waiting in line, so the story could be about the wait, or the endless humming afterwards. But that is very personal, as in it might not matter to anybody who wasn’t there. And that story is a little boring. Unless there was an explosion. Then everybody would know, and some of them would care.