cab rides

Last night after a wonderful dinner at an old friend's house, Hubby and I put ourselves in cab around 3am. I was fascinated by our wild bleached blonde momma driver. I was laughing so hard at her incessant mile-a-minute stories that I think she was witness to the snort. When we reached our place she turned the car off and turned and faced us to finish her story. We sat there 5-10 minutes.

A few months ago, when we were cabbing home from a surprise birthday party I threw Hubby, we had a moronic laughing fit over the fact that our birthday should in fact be called our deathday because it's not about how long we've been alive, but rather how much longer we have left to live. For some reason Cabbie found this hilarious and well, laughter is contagious. In any case, a laughing fit broke out inside the cab to the extent that our cab driver had to stop the car in the middle of the street and put the car in park and turn off the meter because he was laughing so hard. Before he put the vehicle in park, he had been tapping the brake as we literally crawled 5mph down the street, then we'd jerk to a stop, crawl forward, jerk to a stop, crawl...in rythym to the waves of our laughter. We couldn't breathe we were laughing so hard. My sides and belly were aching the next day.

One time years ago I didn't have any money to make it all the way to my place so I told my cabbie to drop me........."here", when I saw that the meter had reached my limit. He refused, especially as it had started to rain lightly. When we arrived at my place I told him I had to give him something for his kindness, and that I had just made a few vases in my ceramics class and I thought one of those would be perfect as I had spent a lot of time on the glaze motifs and was really proud of them. "I'll just run inside and get them and you can choose your favorite!" He turned to me and laughed and told me in his thick African accent that the fact that I wanted to give him something I had just made was a gift enough for him and made him feel richer than having the physical object could. "Awwww" I said gushing. Then I remembered that I had a fresh unopened pack of Icebreakers chewing gum (my favorite) in my purse so I held it up to him and asked him if he would accept it. Our eyes were locked and shimmering and he smiled so wide and warmly at me as he quietly nodded. I reached up and hugged him and then got out of the cab and waved at him from my front door as he had waited to make sure I got inside safetly.