On Thursday I wrote the test for my G1 Driver’s License at the Service Ontario branch up at Bloor and College. On my way I stepped into a cab on Queen Street and was immediately told by the driver that it was a brand new car that had just passed all the inspections and that I was it’s very first customer.
Hurray!
“It’s true sir, and according to custom the fortune of the cab depends on the first fare. If it is a good, then this cab will make lots of money and life will be good, but if it is a bad fare, then not so good. So I hope you are good!” And then he broke out into a high-pitched laugh and slapped his hands on the wheel as we sped down Queen.
Ridiculously, but very sincerely, I felt lucky to be considered an omen, and imagined myself a benevolent knight ushering in a new and hopeful era. I did everything I could to be a good fare, which mostly meant talking, which of course, might have been exactly what makes for a bad fare. No matter, we talked about my impending driver’s test, why a man of my age had never had a license and the worst place in the world the cabbie had ever driven, which was Nairobi, Kenya.
“It’s a British colony, right man? So they drive on the wrong side of the street from here and it’s crazy! They don’t obey nothing, they drive on top of one another, it’s like they all lady drivers! Lady drivers, fuck! You got a lady, man?” and then he shook his head to let me know that women were alway busting his balls.
No matter, I made myself as agreeable and pleasant as possible, which turned out to be increasingly difficult as the driver vituperated about all the things in the world that opposed him.
At Queen and Parliament something happened that I didn’t see. This event precipitated two tiny children running across the street against the light. It was a dangerous and scary moment, one that left a man– the father of the children presumably–out in the middle of the street stunned and screaming at a car that was driving away. From the best I can understand, as pieced together by my driver, the car belonged to the mother of the children who was taking off because the father was a jerk. It didn’t make any sense, but this imagined scenario enflamed my driver further who leaned out the window literally shaking his fist, “ You piece of garbage, that why she left, you’re garbage!!”
And then he spat at the man.
There was silence for several minutes.
And then he looked back at me, the anger from the earlier intersection still vivid in his eyes. “ I work hard to protect my kids. One day I come home and my wife is with another man and I ask her if she is a prostitute. You know what she does? She calls the cops and I go to jail for the night! I. GO. TO. JAIL. For asking if she a prostitute!”
At that awkward moment we got to my destination. Still trying to be the good omen fare, I gave him a big tip, but it was pretty clear that regardless of what type of fare he’d had, things just weren’t that likely to work out well.