remain seated

I'm fascinated by signs in Second Life. They turn up all over the place, sometimes in unlikely places, often telling you the obvious, and like this one, “Remain Seated”, which I would have thought you’re more likely to see on the train itself rather than where I found it, beside the railway tracks.

Where are you supposed to sit? On the tracks? On the sleeper or the rail? And would that really be a good idea, being that when the train comes, well, splat! How frequent are the trains on this track anyway? You could sit there waiting but then you might be waiting hours, or even days, weeks. It would be like inworld camping without the remuneration at the end.

If you were on the train and weren’t looking out of the window at the time of passing the sign then how would you know to remain seated? You’d have to rely on the driver or conductor giving a customer message over the intercom. I wouldn’t hold out for that though, as of all the trains I been on in SL, and I’ve been on a few, I’ve never heard anyone say anything, not even to remain seated, or even “tickets please!”, which would be awkward if they did because I never have a ticket, which means they’d probably throw me off the train while it was moving, whether I was seated or not. Ouch!

They’d think I was a hobo. I wonder where the word comes from, ‘hobo’. I checked and found all kinds of theories, but no one really knows for certain. One idea is it being short for “homeward bound” which sounds sort of plausible but I’m not totally convinced. Other ideas are even flakier. Mine is that it’s come from something like ‘homeless bohemian’, as in someone who lives kind of outside normal society by maybe choosing to have to no home. I’m not sure if this is a new idea or not, but I did come up with on my own.

Anyway, I’m not one, a hobo, so it really doesn’t matter. But I will keep chasing signs for the more intriguing and mysterious ones.