Ever since I can remember, I was fascinated with trains. For some reason, trains were like magic to me. I can remember my mother reading train stories to me at bedtime, these stories were like a sleeping potion helping me go to sleep even when I was convinced that I was not tired. My first memory of a toy train is the one my parents would put under our Christmas tree every year. I would spend hours sitting and watching the train go around and around the tree. Sometime, my mother would make me leave the train and go play with something else because she worried about me spending so much time watching it. I was always sad when my mother and father took our Christmas tree down and put away the train until the next year. However, it gave me something to look forward to, and when the next Christmas drew near I would get excited to see the train again.

I remember my first train ride as if it only happened yesterday. I was six years old and very excited that we were actually going to take a trip on a real train. Once the train began to move, I felt a steady throbbing like the beating of drums. I looked out the window expecting to see a parade when I realized that what I felt were the train wheels moving on the tracks, not drums. Fascinated with looking out the window, I felt like a kid in a toy store. Swiftly sliding pictures quickly flashed by like a motion picture in fast forward. Outside the window, beyond the flashing of the telegraph poles, red streaked the sky. A clump of trees blotted my view for a moment; then it showed brighter than before. The sun was a fiery shield, rising over the rolling, unfailing land. The train rocketed loudly over a bridge, and the sunrise glittered like diamonds on a smooth sheet of water where a little fleet of ducks peacefully floated among the reeds.

I will never forget that memorable train ride that seemed like another dimension in another world. I still loved the toy train that my mother and father continued to put under our Christmas tree every year, and after my first ride on a real train, watching the toy train was even more fun for me. Often, watching the toy train was like I was riding on the real train again.

Good luck and have fun with your Simile/Metaphor journal entry!