Driving Taxi On My Birthday

Yesterday, Sunday, was my birthday.  Given my unusual schedule, two days on and five days off,   I  normally (for better or worse) take it in stride, knowing I can and will celebrate later.  Depending on my mood and the situation, I do or don't tell passengers that indeed it is my special day.  Taxi is insanity personified so I can only take everything so seriously though the past two weekends I've been a trifle over sensitive, doing a reasonable presentation of the various facets of taxi psychosis made manifest.  Don't tell me you want to take Madison.  You want me to ____ you?

Can you believe that after my more or less 24 part-time years I can't stand taxi any longer?  Tedium and boredom comprise a monotonous tune mirthlessly sung. My one disappointment this weekend was not making it to Ocean City for my greatly satisfying bowl of soup.  Ocean City is my Chinese stand-in for the Jewish mother serving up chicken broth minus the matzo.  Their broth is sustaining, getting me through and past the Saturday bar rush.  Perhaps that is why I had to pull over in the Wallingford and sleep for a hour.  Getting too busy I didn't stop and then about three AM I took a drug couple to one of a series of cheap motels that reside near and around the 72000 Block of East Marginal Way South.  I knew I was pushing it, going that far south only having to head back north but I liked them, the guy enjoying my response when I responded in an odd tone, no, I would not be taking them for only $15.00 dollars.  We all laughed and enjoyed the ride.

Small Revenge

I was totally surprised when the three upper-middle class kids left the taxi without paying.  It was silly.  Perhaps they were apprenticing as hoodlums.  I always find it humorous when passengers run as if I am going to chase and grab them, pounding them into taxi submission.  But since I know a trifle about basic psychology I yelled after them to just realize I will remember their well-fed faces and when I see them again up on Broadway they better watch out!  Nothing like instilling fear into the foolish, knowing that at least for the short term every time they see a Yellow taxi they will flinch, concerned that it is the big, bad ME seeking equal compensation.   It is well worth the eight dollars! knowing that guilt and their own idiocy will bop them on the head for me.  Now that I am 58 I am too ______to be pursuing goofballs into the night.  I would rather they bite and chase their own tails.  Let them lead themselves down their own misbegotten trail.  I personally am too lazy for such nonsense.