I’m tired of talking about Willie. 

But probably not as tired as you are of hearing about her. 

So let’s change the subject. 

There’s that weird weekend between Christmas and New Year’s. The holidays are over. 

But they’re not.  

This year, on that awkward weekend, I sort of went to New York City 

See, in October, I bought tickets to Back to the Future: The Musical on Broadway. 

Dude, don’t ask me. I don’t know how a Delorean gets to 88 miles per hour on a stage in the middle of New York City. How Biff chases a skateboarding Marty into a manure truck. How Doc gives the Libyans a shiny bomb casing full of used pinball machine parts. 

The kids wanted to see it. I bought tickets. Done. 

Sort of.  

My daughter awoke on the big day with an infection. 

A go-to-the-doctor-and-get-antibiotics kind of infection. 

Which is exactly what we did. 

But now I had a dilemma. 

I couldn’t take my little Typhoid Mary into the world, all oozy and hacking. 

But Broadway isn’t really known for its flexible refund and exchange policies. 

I called the ticketing agent anyway. I explained our situation. Our infected, gooey situation. 

To my surprise, the ticketing agent called the theater, who acquiesced — they allowed me to change my tickets to the following weekend. 

The aforementioned weekend between holidays. 

Planner that I am, I already had our New Jersey Transit tickets, for the train from Hamilton Station to New York’s Penn Station.  

But as long as they’re not activated, they’re good for about a month. 

The only thing left to do was shift our Times Square dinner reservations.  

Again I say, done. 

Again I say, sort of. 

On that Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s, the kids and I set out for the train station. 

Wait. 

I forgot my husband was working all day. 

I failed to make plans for our dog. 

Who will 100 percent pee in my house by intermission. 

I became that dreadful friend making last-minute Sunday calls. Can you let my dog out? 

That was when I lost track of time. 

We left for the train station 15 minutes later than I intended. 

Now, in my defense, I was in the middle of the whole Willie situation. 

But trains don’t care. 

At the station, a car stopped in front of me. 

Instead of, I don’t know, parking in a free parking spot in short-term parking intended specifically for drop-offs, this fella stopped dead in the middle of traffic.  

With no room to go around him. 

The driver and his passenger got out because it takes two people to remove a carry-on from an open trunk.  

The men hugged. Chatted. Hugged. They clearly thought the “just a sec” wave they gave me stopped the train from leaving without me. 

The driver and his passenger parted ways. The driver got back in his car.  

I saw the car shift into gear.  

Then shift back into park. 

Another passenger got out. 

Was I behind a very specific kind of clown car? 

This passenger was in the back seat the whole time and decided now was the best time to get into the front seat? 

Why — I don’t know — why couldn’t this passenger have moved seats during the long goodbye? 

When the Parcheesi-style blockade finally moved, I found parking and dashed to the platform. I managed to catch the train. 

With the kids. I didn’t forget them. 

The train was standing room only. 

Until a conductor yelled at me to find a seat. 

Maybe he knows Willie and, like her friends, is angry I moved her. 

Despite a trainload of people standing in the aisles, and despite never receiving a paycheck from New Jersey Transit, I walked through the train, kids in tow. 

I had people move their jackets. Their bags. Their feet. 

The kids and I sat. 

That was when the train stopped. 

For more than an hour, we idled on that track.  

We arrived in Penn Station 15 minutes after Back to the Future began.  

It’s a 15-minute walk to the theater. 

On a good day. 

This particular weekend, I belatedly learned, is a bad day. Times Square is so flush with people just before New Year’s, the sidewalk traffic can’t move.  

Pedestrians risk walking in the street to bypass crowds. They take Fifth or Sixth Avenues — only marginally better than Seventh Avenue when it comes to the holiday crowds. 

They give up. Stand still. Take a selfie or vape or ogle the eight different Batmans. 

Batmen? 

We never saw our show.  

The Alanis irony of being late to a show about time travel is not lost on me. 

This was Back to the Future’s last week on Broadway. Our schedule made the offer to see another show for an additional $44 apiece — standing room only — an impossibility. 

I know. 

The good news is we were two hours early for our dinner reservation. Yard House gladly accommodated us. 

As we waited for our food, the kids used their job money to treat themselves to a round of trivia on the table’s tablet. 

“In what movie,” the trivia game asked, “was a Delorean used as a time machine?” 

Ooh. 

Too soon, Yard House. 

Too soon.