Train fairy

Sarah Liu

Freshman Sarah Liu woke up to find new toy trains.

She was five or six at the time and very excited about the Thomas the Train characters. That day, she discovered toy trains all over the house; if her bed was purple, there was a little purple train by it, or if the table was green, she saw a green train. When she went to the park, she found a green train hiding in the grass.

“It was really cool — it was like an all-day scavenger hunt, and I was just going around the house, and on the floor, I’d be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I found another train!’” Liu said. “And I don’t know, I thought it was like a train fairy — there was a tooth fairy, a leprechaun, [and] I was like, ‘Oh, train fairy, I’m just gonna add it to my list.’”

Liu mostly forgot about the trains until a few years ago when she was cleaning out her closet and found a bag full of 20 or 30 little trains.

“I was like ‘Oh my God, oh wait, I remember these,’” Liu said. “My mom was like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember when you were little, I took them and I hid them around the house.’ And I was like ‘Oh wow,’ and I just thought it was really sweet [and] really wholesome.”