Wednesday, March 17, 2010

My First White Person

If I have not mentioned this before I need to say so now, I only drive at night, except on the weekends because I have a day job. This happened on a Saturday, this was 5 days into driving I'm feeling a more comfortable. The dispatch sends me to the grocery store to pick someone up, but the the person is gone. Well this scraggly white man flags me down, I don't discriminate so I stop to pick him up. I pop the truck so he can put his groceries in. He has this soft raspy voice and I ask him where he is going he says okay just any gas station. So I say okay and go towards the nearest gas station he says no go the other way it is closer to my house.

I ask him where he lives and there is silence, so I start off going to nearest gas station and he says can you stop at the liquor store so I can get my cigarettes. so I pull into the liquor store and he says can you drive around to the window (with that voice). I pull up to the window and the Asian lady ask who do I want. I say a carton of cigarettes ( I can't remember the brand). she says o no we don't sell by the carton.

I forgot to mention that this cab has the bullet proof glass, but I keep it open during the day and with my familiar customers. He sticks his head between the glass and yells and I quote "SLOTH" ....(I will pause so you can process that). It was suppose to be loud but he was too weak and frail to make it hurt her. I mean my mouth was agape, I just took my foot off the brake, not accelerating or stopping while starting in the air, I was just confused didn't know how to react SLOTH what!!!

So then he asked to go to the 7 11 to get his cigarettes, after he gets them he asks me to take him home. So I pull in the drive way and he says well I need to be in front of the door. His house was off the roadway so to be in front of the door you would have to drive in the front yard. So I pulled his ass to the door. By the end of that day I was feeling like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the lamb. "Just put the lotion in the damn bucket" "UHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" pullin on my shirt and shit!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQb2m6VJ-eo

The First Time

Woke up one day... tired of being in debt, so tired, so I thought driving a cab is a quick way to pay off my debt and get some other things I want to get into rolling. Mind you I have no sense of direction and don't know how to get any place but....

Have you ever tried something that you knew was dangerous but had to do for the money (sorry hoes not talkin bout trickin-- but this is like trickin). You feel all scared and apprehensive but end up saying... "Fuck It" you just have to try. That is exactly how I felt the first time I went out in the cab.

This is going to sound cliche but it was a cold dark night the wind was crisp.... Blah blah blah (Really it was). I decided that I would pick my first passenger up from the subway station.

Now the first thing everyone says when they get in my car and I mean every single passenger is "damn I have never seen a women driver before and you speak English". So finally my first first passenger got in my car, I was scared as shit, he didn't look scary I was just scared didn't know where I was going, he was nice and told me how to get to where he needed to go. But man was he a doosy. Let me tell you, people tell the cab drivers all and I mean ALL. Now he was going maybe five minutes away from his house, by the time he got there I knew how many kids he had the school he was going to, his job, his relationship with his wife, her relationship with the boyfriend. We pulled up and he would not get out of the cab, I didn't care the meter was running and I guess he needed a friend.

Then he decided to confide in me a strange secret, that he too cheated on his wife, big secret right, a man cheating on his wife. The thing that made my mouth fall open was it was with a Blind Woman....huh