“5213.”

“5213.”

Silence.

“Train office to train 5213.”

More silence.

“Train office to train 5213. Is there an emergency?”

At this point, I had a decision to make. Jacob’s voice was sounding a little vexed over the radio he was using to talk to me from the next room. Do I answer it, even though he had told me I was a different train number? I decided yes.

So I said into my radio, “What do you need, train office?”

An exasperated sigh came over my radio. “DAD! You are train 51. If I call a different train, DO NOT ANSWER!”

Well. I guess now I know.

Jacob has been having a lot of fun with radios lately. His favorite game is to pretend to be a train dispatcher. He’ll tell me, Laura, or Oliver where to go, what track to take, what passengers to pick up, or anything else he can come up with. Sometimes one radio isn’t enough — he may even have two radios clipped to him in various places.

We play radio hide and seek (where you use radios to give hints or tell people when you’re ready to be found). We play train office. We use radios to communicate across the room sometimes, even. Pretty amazing to see him doing that.

He’s taken an interest in my amateur radios, too. He’s been practicing — under close supervision, of course — how to use them, and how to properly give his callsign on the air. The boy is a natural. It’s fun to watch him dive into something like that and enjoy it so much!