(You might want to go the
bathroom and/or fetch yourself an adult beverage before you proceed
further. It's up to you, but I'll have to ask you to sign a waiver,
if you don't.)
Did you ever sit at Starbucks and listen to other people's conversations? Nah, me neither. I hate Starbucks. Their coffee tastes like battery acid, only stronger and more corrosive. And if I'm going to order something “grande” or “vente”, it better have tomato sauce on it and maybe a meatball or two snuggled up next to it. Garlic bread? Don't mind if I do. But anyway, back to listening to other people's conversations. I'm not the NSA or anything but I now have a profession whereby I get paid to listen in, so to speak. You may or may not know this but your beloved blogger has been an Uber driver for the past 6 months. Yeah, that means I get to drive the flotsam and jetsam of society from their humble abodes to their jobs at Chipotle or Fuddrucker's for a fee. Now, no doubt, these are hard working, salt of the earth, illegal aliens that I'm driving, but my opinion of their personal status seems to dramatically elevate if they slip me a $2-4 tip for providing them safe and secure transportation while providing them the light banter that is my trademark. Heck, I'll invite them over for Thanksgiving dinner if they'll duke me $10 for a $40 ride to the airport.
As it is with driving and solving the world's problems in my spare time, I take my Uber responsibilities very seriously. Serious as a heart attack. Getting people from point A to point B is not for the faint of heart. Driving safely through Boston and it's suburbs in traffic of biblical proportions, while being guided by the GPS, is akin to landing a 747 in a blizzard on The Golden Gate Bridge at midnight without the lights on. (For clarification: both the lights on the 747 and the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge are not on.) And I'm just the person to do it. Why did I decide to do drive for Uber, you may ask? Heck, I don't know. I certainly wasn't bored in my retirement. (See previous note about solving all the world's problems.) I have enough in the retirement/on-line poker account to live lavishly into my early 70's. (I turned 67 years young some time ago and thanks again for the birthday present). I thought, “What the heck,” it doesn't cost anything, you can work the hours that you want and I might meet some people that would help create a kickass blog like the one you're reading right now. My lovely bride, the former Miss Massachusetts, says that I started driving for Uber because I get a new audience to listen to my BS several times a day. I think she may be onto something there. I know she's told me on multiple occasions, at ever escalating decibels, that she was tired of listening to my BS. So, I decided to take my act on the road, for profit no less.
I've driven some interesting people in my travels.
My first two “riders”
on Day 1 were nice people. Rider #1's car was being serviced and
Rider #2 was leaving his work as a chef and needed a ride home. (Cha
ching!) Very late that same afternoon, I picked a young lady for ride
#3, I really didn't see her face as she entered my car but I did
notice she was wearing sweat pants and a loose fitting tee shirt. As
I fired up the GPS to take her to her destination, I noticed that it
said “151 Newbury Street in Peabody.” Now to the uninitiated
and/or inexperienced Uber driver one might not recognize that Newbury
Street in Peabody is Route 1. Rt. 1 has a million businesses that
don't exactly have a sign hanging out front saying that they are
“151.” So, I politely asked the young lady which business was
located at 151 Newbury Street, her destination. She answered, equally
politely, that 151 Newbury Street in Peabody was the site of THE
GOLDEN BANANA, a somewhat well known, to people other than myself,
STRIP CLUB. She was a stripper. Do you know how hard it is to not
laugh your spleen out at a moment like this? I remained my usual
controlled and cool as a cucumber self. So I drove her to The Golden
Banana and as I approached the building, I wasn't sure whether I
should deposit her at the back or front door to disembark. My
cat-like mind said “Unload her at the front door you dope” and so
I did. Next thing, from the back seat, is a hand with a tip in it. I
told her that a tip was unnecessary but she insisted. I was half
waiting for her to say, “Here's $5 bucks. Now you can have that
operation you always needed.” But she didn't, and, in the words of
the songwriter Harry Chapin in his song “Taxi”,”I stuffed the
bills in my shirt.” I did turn around to thank the young lady and
that's when I noticed the heavy duty eye liner and eye shadow. Tools
of the trade, I guess. So she departed and I made sure I didn't
explode with laughter for at least 500 feet after I left the parking
lot. Just my luck that I was the only person for the next 6-7 hours
that was going to see this young lady with her clothes on. Life is
definitely not fair.
Some days later on a Friday afternoon, I picked up three people in a nearby town. Thank goodness I drive a Honda Pilot because they had so much luggage I asked the guy if he was going into the witness protection program. There was him, his wife and her mother in the backseat. Now the wheels on the bus hadn't turned round and round more that two or three times when each of them got on their respective cell phones. Three separate people, on three separate conversations, each loud enough that you'd think they learned how to whisper in a saw mill. It was very challenging for me to try and listen to each of their conversations, in order to hear something juicy, like one of them mentioning where Jimmy Hoffa was buried or how the hell Obama not only got elected but re-elected, but I gave it my all. There was no juice or Jimmy Hoffa expose unfortunately, and nobody I know, in or out of the Uber world, can figure out how Obama got elected.
Then there was the two black dudes that I picked up in Lowell. They had black hats, black tee shirts, black pants, socks and sneakers. I would suspect that they wore black underwear also, but that would be profiling. Of course, they had black sunglasses on to complete the thug ensemble. Mind you, it was raining that day but why let the weather interfere with the bad ass couture. In addition, they lugged into "Lucille", my car, a boom box about the size of a 2 bedroom condo. Alleged perpetrator #1 then said to me, "Can you drive us to the Bronx?" My cat like mind quickly discerned that driving Tupac and Denzel 250 miles into the war zone they call the Bronx was not an excellent career move on my part, even if the commission for me would be in the neighborhood of $300-$400. So I said to them in my best Clint Eastwood voice, "I don't think I can do that." Having gotten those words out I summoned my previous Delta Force, Airborne Ranger, Black Ops, Klingon, Seal Team 6 training and said, "But thanks anyway." And they said, "No problem," and promptly exited the vehicle in a timely manner before I had to get "Jack Bauer" physical on them.
But the nails on the blackboard winnah, winnah, chicken dinnah experience is any ride, anywhere, for any distance with two teenage girls in the back. The conversation typically goes something like this: "So I says like to her, like.......... And she like says to me like …...... and I says like to her like, well like...... Every other freakin' word is like "like." For some reason teenage girls must have all the money in the world or mommy or daddy's credit card to take (like) Uber rides, because I seem to get a disproportionate share of them in my travels. The teenage boys that I drive just sit there, say nothing to each other and grow pimples.
Until like next time.
