See What Happens When You Let Your Mind Wander for a Second?

It’s bad enough I’m afraid to fly and have to take the train everywhere. Now, the trains aren’t safe. Now we have runaway trains! (How am I ever going to go anywhere from now on? I get my taxes done in New York. Will I have to get in bubble wrap and ship myself to my accountant?)

It turns out it was a two-man crew running this 47-car train in Ohio, a conductor and an engineer. The conductor was already off the train. Then the engineer wanted to step off for a second, but instead of applying the break, he opened up the throttle.

Lucy, you got some ‘splaining to do!

Excuse me, you don’t turn the engine off when you leave the train?

OK, I’ll guess: “Because you want to keep the AC going?” Bzzzt! I’m sorry. It’s a train, dummy, not a Honda Accord parked in front of the Wawa Mart with two kids and a dog in the back seat while you run in to get cigarettes.

I’m assuming the engineer got off to go to the loo--there’s a sign in every train lavatory: “Do Not Flush Toilet While Train Is in the Station.”

So when he got back from the bathroom, then what?

A: “Dude, where’s my train?”

B: “Hmmm, I could have sworn I left it right here.”

C: “Well, it’ll turn up. I mean, it’s not like I was so stupid that I left it in gear with the motor . . . Uh-oh!”

(At this point, I believe it’s Sandra Bullock’s turn to say, “Omigod, I thought this was going to be a quiet vacation.”)

Now add the fact it was carrying hazardous liquid--which turned out to be a concentrated form of stuff they put in mouthwash. If it’s not diluted, it will “burn the skin on contact.”

Doesn’t it make you feel good to know the active ingredient in Scope is some kind of flesh-eating chemical? By all means, swirl it around your mouth.

So I guess I’ve taken my last train ride.

Let me deftly switch gears. Remember last week when I wrote about that guy who didn’t leave his key with the parking lot attendant, and as a result I had to wait 50 minutes to get my car off the lot? I don’t want you to think that I’m stuck in a rut, but I had another “car rage” incident this week.

I was driving to work. Even with two lanes, rush-hour traffic crawls. So there are big signs along the curb: “No Parking. No Standing. 7-9:30 a.m.” Because if the curb lane is blocked, you can sit there long enough for the Chicago Cubs to three-peat. Sometimes the lane is blocked by one of those beer trucks that are so huge Rudy Giuliani, his wife and his girlfriend can live inside.

Beer delivery is the luck of the draw, but the other morning there was an old gray Toyota parked in the curb lane, its flashers on. I counted four different light changes before I budged. I was fuming. You could have supplied California with energy for a decade by dunking my head in the Grand Coulee Reservoir.

Then, out of the coffee joint on the corner, comes this fat babe, 40-ish, carrying a cup of coffee. She heads lah-dee-dah for the Toyota, opens the driver’s side, starts the car and saunters off with the subtle nuance of, um, a 47-car train.

This was far worse than that cluck who blocked my car in the parking lot last week. That wasn’t intentional. Without intent, incivility is only a second-degree felony.

But this woman deliberately blocked a full lane of cars so she could get a cup of joe! And it wasn’t even truck-stop joe, which you might be able to forgive her for. It was that yuppie half-caf de-caf mocha latte machupicchu four-bucks-a-cup crap.

This babe hosed everybody on that street for 10 minutes while she bought her designer coffee. My friend Tom said, “Wouldn’t it be great if she went back because they didn’t sprinkle cinnamon on it?”