The other day I grabbed a taxi, and as I got into the back seat I commented to the driver, \u201c So, you think the rain is going to hold off again?\u201d The question seemed to irritate him, and in a blunt, forceful Russian accent, he retorted, \u201cIf it rains it rains!\u201d His tone suggested that it was the stupidest question he had ever heard in all his years of driving.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I nodded my head, \u201c So what you\u2019re saying is that since you can\u2019t influence the weather, why bother worrying about it, right? Well, I guess that\u2019s a pretty reasonable way to approach life, if you can pull it off. \u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cRain, no rain, who cares?\u201d<\/p>\n

We sat in a kind of prickly silence after that.<\/p>\n

As he rounded onto Bloor at Spadina, he began to furiously pound on his horn. \u201cLook at this, \u201c he yelled back at me. \u201cThe lady is taking up two lanes while she tries to turn!\u201d As he was saying this he was driving past the SUV, but still honking his horn and sneering at the woman for good measure. Feeling slightly wounded by his response to my rain question, I said, \u201cAh, you shouldn\u2019t worry about it! You can\u2019t influence how she drives, so why get yourself all tied-up in knots?! \u201c Adding magnanimously, as if offering him a drink, \u201cAnd besides, you\u2019re already past her, relax! Traffic, no traffic, who cares?\u201d<\/p>\n

The driver exhaled loudly, looked back at me once and then looked back at me again before shaking his head from side to side.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou think you\u2019re smart guy, eh?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou feel smart right now?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like a fucking Buddha.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are no fucking Buddha.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for the rest of the fare we drove amidst a tense silence, one that was punctuated only by the sound of dispatch in the background.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day I grabbed a taxi, and as I got into the back seat I commented to the driver, \u201c So, you think the rain is going to hold off again?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[391,2486,113,2488,2489,186,726,80,278,2487,2485,105,38,561,592],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4416,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413\/revisions\/4416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}