 Another Day... I was talking to a woman one day, and she asked if we give senior citizen discounts. I tried not to laugh too loud, or explain that there are lots of drivers who practically won't even stop for seniors... because they take too long to get into the car, to get out of the car, and they never go far enough in between to make up the difference in their pathetic tips. And then I remembered one lady I'd picked up at a BART station, once upon a time. I think I'd repressed the memory in the meantime. I hope to repress it again sometime soon. In the meantime, I'll share. I was first up in the cab line, and I'd been waiting damn near an hour. I was busy reading, and trying not to think about how much longer it was gonna be before somebody decided to give me their money... when the front door opened and in climbed the ugliest woman I'd ever seen in my life. Why?! I wondered, Why did I forget to lock my front door today?! She had on a garment that might've been a long shirt or a dress, and she had some sort of pants-like thing too. It was too painful to look very closely. She was draped with all sorts of... stuff- costume jewelry, cloves of garlic, cartoonishly garish rouge, 2 sweaters and 2/3 of a windbreaker, stuff... a mismatching set of broken glasses taped together in the middle... it was awful, and she smelled like death-sweat. "Hi, I wanna take him wherever he's going..." she said, gesturing now at a rather respectable looking black gentleman who was climbing into the back of the cab with a look on his face of horror and panic, "and then I want you to take me back to my place." I looked back at dude, and then at her, and then back at dude, and then at my watch. I needed the money. She was probably just insane. She probably had SSI money, or something, despite the fact that she looked like a archetypal bag lady. Or, maybe dude was paying?... So I took them, looking straight ahead as much as possible. "Say, I'm kind of hungry. You hungry?" she asked dude. "Yeah, uhh, I ... uhh, well, I could eat. But, no, really... uhh..." he stammered something inarticulate. "Ok, driver, take us to Jack in the Box... or, no... wait, what's nearest here?" "Burger King." I promptly answered, glad for something else to think about than her... just go over all the sources of 99 cent burgers within a five mile radius... over and over... don't think about the thing beside you... So we went to Burger King, and as we waited in the drive-thru line our hostess told us about the ins and outs of panhandling... she told of how, if you know what you're doing, you can make good money at it... she told us of bringing her take to the bank, and changing all those coins and singles into a hundred bucks, and then swinging by the Oaks Card Club, and doubling it into 200 playing high-low poker, or maybe it was Pai Gow?... and then she got around to talking about how her Old Man was such a bum, and how she had to support him... And when we got to the window, and the bag lady bought dude his Jr. Whopper value meal, dude said thank you very much, opened the door, and jumped out on the lawn without even bothering to wait for her to pass him back any ketchup packets. And then there were 2. So then she gave me her address, more or less. I drove... and now she really went into the sob story routine. She had to support her Old Man. She had to pay the rent. "And say, you're kind of cute..." she added, reaching over to caress my thigh. I swatted her hand away, saying "Yeah... uh... should I take 28th Ave to get you home quickest?" She tried again, and I veered around an imaginarily suddenly opening car door, just to make physics work for me for a change. "You do give a senior discount don't you?" she tried at last. I didn't even bother to try not to laugh. "No, we don't. You can go to the city, and get them to subsidize you with scrip, with a doctor's note... but that's between you and the city. We don't give a discount. Period." As I pulled into her driveway, onto her trailer lot, she gave it one more go. "Are you sure you can't give me a couple of bucks off?, I mean... maybe we could work something out. You are kind of cute... and I really don't have enough money..." "Lady," I reminded her, "... if you're gonna try to pull that con, you really shouldn't start by bragging about all the money you made in the card room. Remember that? Now give me my money." So she tried to give me $15 for the $17.60 fare. "Come on, 2 more dollars." "I don't have any change..." she said, trying to make her eyes mist behind the mismatching taped up glasses. "I'll make you some fucking change, now give me my money." I managed to get the 2 more dollars from her. I decided I'd rather take the loss of the 60 cents though, than touch her in any way to squeeze the money out of her. Then I immediately headed downtown. I needed to wait at a
different cabstand for a while, and I needed the drive time with the windows
open to air out the car, too...
there's No Place Like Home... You've gotta be shitting me Alex |
