His Dream:
Working for the New York City Transit Authority.
His Quest:
Obsessions come in all shapes and sizes, but fewer are harder to understand than an obsession with trains. For most of us, trains are means to an end. They take us to work, they allow us to experience the sights and sounds of a place when we're traveling, and they're awesome for secretly feeling up strangers. For Darius McCollum, they're the equivalent of a cheeseburger that blows you while you eat it.
"Hey. Hey train. Whatcha doin' later? Carrying passengers? Hot."
McCollum grew up in New York and by the age of five, when most people are still not 100 percent sure where the bathroom is, he had memorized the entire subway system. Shocked at how little respect and admiration this earned him with other kids, McCollum's obsession grew until in 1981, at the age of 15, he stole the E-train.
You may be asking yourself, "how the fuck do you steal a train?" Well, he didn't exactly steal it, he more sort of borrowed it. McCollum hijacked the train and drove it along its regular route. He was so good, in fact, that the passengers had no idea anything was wrong. Passengers only became suspicious when they noticed that the driver was doing his job in a professional manner and wasn't muttering "fuck 'em all" under his breath over and over.
McCollum was eventually caught and charged.
But Should Have Quit Before...
Instead of enjoying his joyride and devoting his energies into a full time masturbation regimen like other, healthy 15 year olds, he kept on stealing trains. McCollum has been arrested 26 times and incarcerated for 19 of them. All this just to pretend to do a job that the people who actually do probably loathe.
In a rare moment of clarity, McCollum wonders how his life would have been different if had just decided to be really into Star Wars.