Life Slices 01
Uber Driver Is Having A Good Night
This is all totally true even if I honed it shortly after the fact, at 37,000 feet while anticipating my first Bloody Mary in dude's honor.
At our ride’s end, I told him he sounded like he had a novel or screenplay worth of stuff.
I thought for a second about giving him some PRO-TIPS about what not to say to passengers other than me, decided I didn't have time, and got on my plane.
But not before writing the following. . .
May 25, 2015
Uber driver is having a good night.
Informs me car is steamed up because he was making out for last two hours with his last customer.
“Look at the windows, man”—he’s still breathless—“this JUST happened.”
See, the night had been off to a bad start (some dude offered him $40 to do some crazy, sick stuff) and so he kicked him right the Eff out of his car.
But this girl!
He thinks he maybe could have—but he also thinks she might be The One and so he refrained from—and walked her back to her door.
Anyhow, the thing is, he and this girl talked for a long while, and she accepts him even though he got out of prison after 25 years a few months ago for shooting someone who disrespected him in the head.
Getting out and experiencing the world as it is now feels like something out of Buck Rogers, he says. But after being a knucklehead for the first 12 years inside he got things together and learned how to weld, so now he welds second shift and then Ubers.
He thinks the justice system needs reform, but is no bleeding heart about it. They locked way too many people up in the 90s, he says, so many they couldn’t afford it, but he hopes a lot of the folks he met in there never get out.
But now, well, the check engine light is miraculously off for the first time in weeks tonight, and it’s a sign—he’s blessed—he’s in love with this girl he’s gonna call soon, and hell, even I can feel the love tonight that he’s riding high off of—well, that and maybe a swig or puff or two of something else.
And his Uber rating now that I know I’m not going to be hit on or violently attacked by an ex-con, there probably aren’t any bodily fluids in the back seat, the car isn’t going to break down, and the guy was lucid enough get me to Terminal 5?
Five stars.
Because that all woke me up better than any cup of coffee could.
Because he came off as a man in whom there was no guile.
Because I hope she’s the one.
A few months later, I was reading the Los Angeles Times and came across the following article, which amounted to ridiculous PR for the corrupt taxi industry as they fought against Uber.
Two lines in it caught my eye.
I’ve always hoped he made it alright. And I still hope she was the one.