27th, April 2025
- Black Lawyer
- Apr 27
- 2 min read
Track Trouble: Love on the Spectrum (and Off the Rails)
Filed under: Unholy Matrimony
Dearest Diary,
Last week's courtroom proceedings had the peculiar flavour of a high-speed derailment — one conducted, fittingly, by two parties who had once pledged eternal devotion over a mutual obsession with vintage model trains.
One could hardly have scripted it better.
The Petitioner, a man of exacting nature and unbending devotion to authenticity, alleged grievous mishandling of the communal collection: chiefly, that the Respondent had scandalously realigned the miniature track gauges without historical accuracy.
The Respondent, no less fervent but considerably more protocol-obsessed, countered by accusing the Petitioner of “gross mismanagement of scenic topography” and “irreparable damage to the Appalachian ridge elevation integrity.”
I confess, Diary, it was at that precise moment I longed for death.
The breakdown of their union was not born of betrayal or bitterness, but of something far more fatal: a fundamental incompatibility of autistic obsessions.
He craved perfection.
She demanded procedure.
Neither could forgive the other for calling a 1948 Chesapeake & Ohio caboose a 1947 “by sight alone.”
Their love, like their hobby, had always been exquisitely detailed and catastrophically rigid.
The negotiations quickly descended into exquisite madness:
Custody of a limited-edition Lionel factory blueprint, to be divided via “supervised museum visits.”
Allegations of terrain slope sabotage.
A spirited debate as to whether misplacing a brass coupling was “negligence” or “character assassination.”
At one point — and I wish I were exaggerating — the Petitioner began narrating the litigation like a stationmaster announcing a tragic delay:
“Now arriving on Platform One: profound emotional invalidation!”
I did not weep, Diary.
I simply adjusted my spectacles, steepled my fingers, and prepared to charge double.
Even Her Honour, a woman unshaken by decades of family law carnage, very nearly sighed aloud when the parties proposed monthly visitation schedules for the Lionel blueprint — with “first pick of caboose polish dates” as a tie-breaker.
Indeed, I feared we might all perish in that courtroom, entombed forever beneath an avalanche of precisely categorized model train parts.
And yet… beneath the obsessive pettiness, there lingered something achingly pure.
A love so sincere it could not survive itself.
They were not wicked, nor even foolish.
They were simply two brilliant systems running on different tracks — destined to collide not out of malice, but out of immutable design.
Thus concluded another ordinary day in Family Court:witnessing the world’s finest intellects tear each other to confetti over a one-inch brass figurine.
Poised. Petty. Permanently Booked on the Last Train to Sanity.
Disclaimer: All model trains, emotional collisions, and blueprint custody arrangements are fictionalized for satirical purposes. No Lionel artisans were harmed during the proceedings.
Tag a friend who’s ever negotiated joint custody of something completely insane.
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