By Country-Fried Mama

A couple of years ago, I scored a major Craigslist find: a full-size train table for my daughter, Miss D., who is now almost four.  I paid 25 bucks for it and thought I would be hailed as Mommy of the Year.  But that fabulous and thrifty purchase has turned into a dust-catcher, a dirty-clothes receptacle, a huge and unused thing taking up an entire corner of Miss D.’s room.

She couldn’t care less about her train table.

The train table at the bookstore, however, elicits a completely different reaction.  On a rainy, cold, boring day, Miss D. is quick to suggest a trip to the cool train table, never mind the nearly identical one right here at home in her room.

February, evil month that she was, provided plenty of indoor-only play days.  We headed to the bookstore one afternoon in the middle of the month.  I grabbed a couple of paperbacks to entertain myself, then steered my younger daughter’s stroller toward the play area at the back of the store.  Miss D. ran ahead of us, her jacket already off and dragging along the floor behind her when she reached the table and quickly began sorting out the train cars left in a pile by some other child.

Miss D. picked the two ugliest trains and handed them to her 18-month-old sister, Belly, then began telling an elaborate story about the remaining trains.  I sat down to flip through my books and listened as Miss D. told Belly about who was on the train and where they were going.

A little girl sitting at a small table behind us started whispering to her mother in Spanish.  Her mother was urging her to go play, too, but the girl was reluctant to walk over and join Miss D.

(And that bit of eavesdropping, my friends, is about all I have done with my college Spanish in the past 15 years.)

I put my books down so I could lean toward Miss D.  “Stick out your hand and say hello,” I told her, quoting one of the more useful episodes of Elmo’s World.

Miss D. takes this advice literally and easily.  At the bookstore, on the playground and almost anywhere other kids are playing, Miss D. is generally open to making new friends.  She walks up to people she has never met, puts her arm straight out in front of her like a little Frankenstein in pigtails and says, “hello.”

Sometimes, her stilted delivery is met with awkward silence.

And sometimes it results in 20 minutes of contented playing in a public place with a child she has never before met and will likely never see again.  It doesn’t matter to her; she is happy to play with just about anyone who wants to play with her (except her sister who doesn’t know how to play right).

While Miss D. learned the stick-out-your-hand-and-say-hello method from the truly annoying Friend Lady on Elmo’s World, the original version of that lesson was performed many years ago by Rick Moranis and Bert, with the help of a flight attendant, a half a dozen Muppets and a cow.

I remember watching my fair share of Sesame Street, but I must have missed that early stick-out-your-hand-and-say-hello performance.  It’s too bad, because while I encourage my daughter to boldly make new friends, I often keep my hands to myself.

And perhaps that is why I failed to understand the true attraction of the bookstore train table when I decided to go out and buy one for Miss D.’s room.

Our bargain train table has it all: the wooden tracks run over a colorful map of the United States and past miniatures of The White House, the Alamo and the Statue of Liberty.  There are little farmers and cows and train conductors Miss D. can scatter beside bridges and tunnels, and a handful of little trains that link together magnetically.  But there are no potential new friends at her Craigslist train table, no candidates worthy of sticking out a hand and saying hello.

Introvert that I am, I could think of nothing better than owning a bookstore-style train table we could play with all by ourselves.

I missed the part Miss D. likes best.

Country-Fried Mama is a transplanted Yankee raising two girls in the land of college football, sweet tea, and refined manners. Visit her blog at www.countryfriedmama.com and follow her on Twitter @countryfried.