Taxi Cab Confessions

Crazy put me in my place again...

Damn.  I vowed the next time I encountered crazy, I would unleash some East Coast attitude on it.  However, I was once again rendered powerless as I fell victim to the random whims of a taxi cab driver.

I was on my way back from an interview with an english language center, but I had to take a cab to get to the train station in an unfamiliar town.  Not thirty seconds into the cab ride the driver asks me how old I am.  Now mind you, my aunt had recently filled my head with paranoid stories of cab ride abductions and killings as my punishment for my first late night out without a proper phone call home, so I was automatically thinking of a snappy answer in case this guy was brewing some funny ideas in his head.  I told him, "Oh, I'm much older than I look", hoping that at that moment, I was projecting an image of about sixty-five.  Nevertheless, he asked again, so I just gave in and told him that I'm twenty-nine.

Twenty-nine people!!  Did you know that it's now the law here that everyone turns a year older as of January 1st?  Not only that, but you're already one when you're born here.  Do the math now folks.  This means that they've prematurely aged me two years!  It doesn't matter that my birthday isn't until later in the year and that I'm not even officially twenty-eight yet.  Just today, I heard my aunt causally rounding me up to thirty in conversation.  Sure, go ahead and add another year while you're at it.  What's another one at this point?  Why don't you get me started on some hormone therapy for menopause while you're at it too?  I hear it can get pretty ugly.

Sorry.  I digress.  Let's recap.  In a cab, strange town, 29.  Great.  

Supposedly the age was a very relevant thing because he said, "Well, now, I'm just asking this as a hypothetical.  I'm not implying anything, but I'm just asking maybe, just maybe, what would you do in a situation like this?"

And I thought, here we go...

Taxi Driver: "Let's say your mother had to take a job, unbeknownst to your dad, doing something slightly...unsavory, like a karaoke bar madame.  Would you think it's okay?  I mean, if it were because there was no other way to make ends meet, and the livelihood of the family depended on it.  Would you be okay with it?"

Sharon: "Uhhhhh...."

Taxi Driver: "I mean, what if this woman had to support her family and put her kids through school with this money."

Sharon: "Uhhhh.... I don't know if that would be okay.  I mean, there must be something else she could do to make money.  I don't know if that would be okay."

Taxi Driver: "Even if it meant you couldn't go to school anymore?!?!"

I mean geez, what was he expecting me to say?  But there seemed to be no end in sight to the continual escalation of this "hypothetical".

Sharon: "Well, I'm sure everyone has their reasons.  I mean, a mother would do anything for her children."

Yeah.  That sounded good.  

Taxi Driver: "Well, actually, I say this because it's someone I know."

A-ha!

Taxi Driver: "And you know...she was talking about how she didn't want to live anymore..."

Once again...tmi.  But if I don't piss him off, maybe he won't drive me into the river.  

Sharon: "I'm sure things must've been very difficult for her to have said something like that."

Taxi Driver: "Of course.  She had never said anything like that before.  But anyway, her daughters don't want her to keep working there."

Sharon: "Yes, I suppose if I were her daughter, I wouldn't want that either."

OMG!  Why?!?  Why won't it stop?!?

Taxi Driver: "Actually, the woman is my girlfriend.  I keep giving her some money to help make ends meet, but she doesn't want to take it."

Once again... O M G !!!

Sharon: "Wow, umm...sooo...you've brought up such a serious conversation for a cab ride...umm...oh, here we are!  How much do I owe you?"

Hand the cab driver the money and get the hell out!!  I thought to myself.

I literally could not get the door open fast enough.  I frantically pulled the handle like 4 or 5 times before I realized it was still locked.  Then I ran up to the stairs to the platform of the train station relieved, but also smiling and thinking to myself...

and that was how crazy struck again.  Longest 8 minutes of my life.