The Jerk in the Cab

I originally wrote this in the Fall of 2009 as the first writing assignment in my NYU Memoirs Class. 
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My husband, baby daughter, and I recently traveled to my home town of Chicago.  I love Chicago.  I know Chicago.  Everything just seems right in Chicago.  I am Chicago.  You need directions, just ask.  Traveling by foot, car, or public transportation, I can tell you how to get there.  Which streets are one way in which direction, you wonder?   I can be of assistance.  I can teach the bewildered cab drivers a thing or two.  Forty plus years, I know the way.  After spending a wonderful evening of wine tasting at the East Bank Club, our former health club, we accepted a ride home from our good friends, Perry and Denise.  Like Chicago, they seem to be perfect -- the perfect couple.  They've been  married twenty-something seemingly argument-free years, while maintaining great careers, and raising Ivy League bound, polite teenagers.  Perry even likes babies.

On our drive back to the hotel, traffic snarled up.  We could clearly see that a cab had stopped right at the corner of State and Erie, preventing a CTA bus from turning.  The bus blocked the intersection, which blocked traffic in all directions.  People were not happy at all.  The people in the cab apparently did not seem to care. They were taking their time.  Didn't they realize that other people were being inconvenienced.  How inconsiderate and selfish can one get?  Have the cab fare ready in advance.  It isn't as if they have anything else to do while being chauffeured around town.  Maybe there were drunk.

"Can you believe that someone would do something like that," my husband said.

"No, because I'm not a jerk," Perry replied.

We all laughed.

"We are engineers.  We just don't do things like that.  We know what the fare and the tip will be, and have it ready.  At most we just have to wait for change.  These people should go back to the suburbs," I said.

Fast forward approximately twenty-one hours.  Its' a Saturday night in New York City.  My husband, daughter and I are all crammed into the back seat of an overloaded, gas-fume-saturated cab on our way home from LaGuardia Airport.  We are at the tail end of our journey.  Almost home ... almost.  KZ, our 16-month old daughter, has been good, but she is at the end of her rope.  There is only so much one can ask of a 16-month old and we are over our limit.  Unfortunately, we were blessed with the only cab driver in New York City that seems to knows Brooklyn better than Manhattan.

"We live on Nassau Street, between Spruce and Beekman, right by City Hall and the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge," I instructed the cab driver at LaGaurdia.

He said he understood, and we were off.

Let me stop here to say my husband is not a patient man.  If my daughter's first complete sentence does not include the phrase "cock sucking mother fucker", I will be stunned but relieved.  When he is forced to be on a plane with a baby, even his own, he is more of a challenge than the baby. 

I was sandwiched in the back seat between the 38 year-old, emotionally challenged husband who was watching "House" on his iPhone, and the 16-month old daughter who was rightfully at her wits end.  I had been sandwiched between them since we left Chicago.  I just wanted it over.

The cab driver turned his head while we were on the expressway and started asking me for directions.

"Which exit do you take?  I thought I would take Tillery and go through Flatbush?"

Well, call it my own hearing problem in the back of the cab, or maybe it was just his Nigerian accent (he did have a Nigerian flag air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror), but I had to ask him to repeat himself three times before I realized that I still had no idea what he was talking about. 

"Tillery?  I've never heard of it.  Flatbush?  Why would we go through Flatbush," I asked.

My totally annoyed husband, broke away from his iPhone long enough to snap at me.

"Turn it down!"

He had opened the window because of the gas fumes.  I had the Cab TV turned on just so I could follow the GPS map of where we were heading.  Cab TV, the conversation, and the opened window all combined with the whimpering baby, was too much for him.  Finally, after what seemed like hours, maybe five seconds, I told the driver I just didn't know Brooklyn.  I'd only seen it from the Brooklyn Bridge, taken a bus tour once with my dad, and ran though it in the 2002 Marathon.  That was where my knowledge ended.

"Oh, you mean the Manhattan Nassau Street!  O.K., I go there."

Thank God!  The driver headed off over the Brooklyn Bridge.  It should have been minutes then, just minutes before I was free. 

Halfway over the bridge, KZ totally lost it. 

Game over.  She had hit her expiration date.  She had had it with being clamped into a five-point harness system.  She wanted out and now.  My husband loudly mumbled under his breath, while he pretended to still be watching "House" on his iPhone.  Finally, we were over the bridge.  Just three left turns and we would have been home.  First turn, executed perfectly.  Second turn, done.  Third turn ... UGH!  He missed the third turn and headed back over the Brooklyn Bridge instead. 

"No, NO, NOOOO!  Stop the cab," I yelled.  "I can't take this any more!"

I was holding back my tears.

We were able to get the driver to stop at the bottom of the ramp, right before he went onto the bridge.  Thankfully, there were two lanes of traffic.  As the driver stopped, right next to a huge pile of garbage, the kind that an entire building deposits for it's twice weekly pickup, I noticed an MTA bus coming up right behind us -- the M103, with a driver who was laying on the horn.  My husband was yelling at the top of his lungs things that I don't even want to repeat while he unloaded the trunk.  My daughter was beyond consoling, as she bucked like a Linda Blair wannabe on the sidewalk, still trapped in her car seat.  Italian tourists were taking pictures for their own version of the story.  I can just picture them back in a beautiful stylish home, speaking in their soft voices.

"Oh Giavonne, you wouldn't believe how crude the American people are.  Yelling randomly on the street and blocking traffic."

"But, Paulo, are you sure they were not drunk?"

I was trying to pry my wallet out of my pocket to pay the driver.  Just get us out of here ... now ... was all I wanted.  I gave the driver $32 dollars and asked for three dollars back.  He just made a hissing noise.  What, a $5.30 tip isn't good enough on a $26.70 ride, I though.  Whatever.

We were all on the sidewalk, luggage, screaming baby, seething husband, enough trash to supply an entire NYC building, and an emotionally drained me.  I felt so sick that I thought I was going to throw up right there and then.  All that kept my airport lunch down was the fact that I didn't want to give the Italians more to photograph.  A few of the people on the now moving bus give us sign language as they pass.

We has more luggage than I ever dreamed possible in my pre-baby days.  We had to schlep all of this two blocks to our apartment.

A few hours later at home ... after my daughter was asleep and my husband was pacified watching "House" on a big screen, I counted my money to pay the Chinese food delivery person.  I realized at that moment that I only gave the cab driver a 30 cent tip.

I am the jerk in the cab.