The Tao of Riding in Cabs

Please tell me I’m not special. I’d hate to think that I’m the only person in the world who has terrible luck with New York cab drivers.

Last fall, during the trip to deliver my daughter to her dorm at NYU, I got into a verbal altercation with a cabbie complicated by the fact that his verbiage was, simply put, NOT English.

My ire started when he refused to help us load the six massive suitcases filled with my daughter’s belongings into his trunk. Thankfully, the hotel valet came to our aid.

Once in the car, I said, “We’re going to 75 Third Avenue, at the corner of Third and Eleventh.” We were at 57th street, and I know enough about New York to know that the street numbers get higher as you go north. In other words, number-75 anything is closer to the south end of Manhattan.

The man turned north.

“Excuse me,” I said, “shouldn’t we be heading south?”

“You say sebennty-fife. I go sebennty-fife street.”

“No, I said 75 Third Avenue. Not 75th street. I told you it’s at the corner of Third and Eleventh.”

An argument ensued, but it wasn’t over what I’d said. The man was arguing with me over whether or not 75 Third Avenue was actually at the corner of Third and Eleventh. He insisted it wasn’t possible.

I finally said, “Just humor me, and take us to Third and Eleventh. Forget the 75.”

The man grumbled in Farsi, I think, for the remainder of the ride. Then, when we arrived, he actually stopped the car and pointed across the two-way, four-lane street we were on and said, “Sebennty-fife across street.”

“Yes, I see it. And you’re going to take us over there, since we have six suitcases in the trunk,” I said. “And once we get there, you’re going to help us unload the six suitcases, or NO TIP FOR YOU!”

Yesterday, my girls and I found ourselves once again the unlucky passengers of a crazy New York City cab driver. He was driving like a hamster on heroin while on the phone describing the noise his car was making. “Dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit, it goes,” he was saying when the car in front of us stopped abruptly. Our distracted driver slammed on the brakes, and my head slammed into the seat in front of me.

My most bizarre cab driver experience, though, actually happened in Las Vegas. My friend, Fran, and I landed at McCarran International Airport and waited in the perpetually long cab line. When it was our turn, a nice looking fifty-something man wearing cowboy boots, a belt buckle the size of the Hoover Dam, and a bolero took our bags, tipped his Stetson, and said, “Good evening, ladies. Where to?”

A pleasant, English-speaking gentleman who drove safely? We took this man to be the equivalent of winning the taxicab MegaMillions.

Traffic was bad on the Strip, but we enjoyed a pleasant conversation with our driver. It took twenty minutes to go two miles, and by the time we finally pulled into the Aladdin, we had exactly ten minutes until our dinner reservations at Tao, which was more than a ten-minute walk from our hotel. We got out of the cab, and I handed the valet a $20 bill and said, “We have dinner reservations at Tao in ten minutes. Can you hold our bags until we get back?”

“Of course, ma’am,” he said. I looked over to see that no one was waiting for a cab, and then I said to our cab driver, “Is it okay if we just stay with you?”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” he said, quite emphatically.

Now, I understand the rule about waiting in line for a cab. But there was no line. Puzzled, I looked at the valet for help. “Aw, come on, dude,” the valet intervened. “These ladies just need to go to Tao.”

The cab driver hesitated, and then he relented. We jumped back into his car, and he turned right out of the Aladdin and onto the Strip. And that was when he looked into the rearview mirror and said, “Could you tell from my response that I’m married?”

“Huh?” Fran and I looked at one another, wondering what he was getting at.

He quickly explained: “When you asked if you could stay with me, I thought you meant you wanted to STAY with me. I said 'No' because I'm married.”

The old cowboy thought we were propositioning him.

Even in Vegas, I can't get lucky with a cab driver.

Collecting Sweatshirts

I cleaned out my closet recently in preparation for my move to Florida. I knew it was time to get rid of some things when I realized I couldn’t see the Bon Jovi poster hanging on the wall. I started with my stack of sweatshirts that I no longer wear, since living in Florida means I won't need so many.

There was the U.S. Open sweatshirt from way back in 2004, the year Svetlana Kuznetsova beat Elena Dementieva for the women’s title and Roger Federer began his domination of the hard courts in Flushing Meadows. I put it in the pile to give away but then pulled it out. That trip was just too good a time to part with the only memento I possess.

I have a green sweatshirt from New York University. My daughter, Morgan, brought it back for me when she made her campus visit. My girl left for college last week, and given how proud I am of her, I will never be able to part with that NYU shirt.

The same goes for my grey University of Hawaii sweatshirt. Several years ago, my family hosted an exchange student from Lithuania. Petras now plays basketball for the University of Hawaii, and last December, my mother and I spent a week together on Waikiki Beach. We enjoyed great books and pina coladas during the day and cheered for Hawaii in the evenings. Unfortunately, Hawaii lost the Rainbow Classic tournament despite all the spirit I showed by purchasing a University of Hawaii shirt. But the shirt reminds me of a well-spent week with my mom, and it also speaks to how someone from the other side of the world can so quickly become a permanent family member. I’ll have it until the sleeves fall off it.

I also have a grey Oxford University shirt, one I obtained by accident. I took my three teenagers to England two summers ago, and we boarded a bus early one morning for a trip to Oxford, Windsor Castle, and Shakespeare’s home. To my complete consternation, we were hurried through our tour of the Oxford. I actually had to beg our tour guide to give me ten minutes to buy my kids each an Oxford University shirt. Somehow, I also ended up with the sweatshirt the guy in line in front of me paid for. I didn’t notice until our tour bus broke down an hour later and we were stranded on the side of the road in the chilly rain somewhere between Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birthplace. I opened the bag to hand my kids their sweatshirts and found the extra one, which I gratefully pulled over my tank top. A serendipitous sweatshirt that was free – life doesn’t provide many of those, so it’s surely a keeper.

By now, you might be wondering if I found one with which I could actually part.

I pulled out of the pile a navy blue sweatshirt with a banana on the front. Circling the banana are the words, “This sh*t is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S,” two lines from a Gwen Stefani song that was popular about four years ago. I bought it at her concert in November 2005, the same week I filed for divorce. It became my divorce uniform, my protest against the whole situation. I even wore it to my attorney’s office on the day I signed the settlement agreement that ended my 19-year marriage.

That’s the one I put in the give-away pile. Sometimes you just know when it’s time to let something go.

Acting Squirrelly

Ten minutes after Morgan’s grandmother and I hugged her goodbye and left her in the massive Third Avenue North Dorm at New York University, I opened my purse to discover that I had some of her important documents.

We were already in a cab bound for our hotel, and she didn’t need the documents immediately, so I promised to take them to her the next evening, after she returned from the day’s Welcome Week activities at Madison Square Garden and after I finished watching the day matches at the US Open.

Now, according to my son, whose tennis lessons have cost me the equivalent of a Mercedes, I “suck” at tennis. But I’m quite possibly the best in the world at watching tennis, especially in beautiful weather. It was a spectacular day. John Isner, the former University of Georgia star, won his match. Rafael Nadal and his muscles meanered past me as I sat eating lunch. I saw James Blake take the first two sets of his match.

At the end of Blake’s second set, Morgan called to say that I needed to vacate my expensive seat at the US Open immediately to go search my hotel room for her lost credit card.

“But I straightened up the room after you left, Morgan, and I didn’t see your credit card.”

“Just go look, Mom.”

“Can I wait until James Blake is finished playing?”

“I’m really worried that my card got stolen. Please just go look now.”

I left the US Open, warily trudging past the huge signs warning that there was no re-entry after I exited the grounds. And of course, as soon as I passed the point of no re-entry, I got a text from Morgan saying she’d found the credit card.

But she still needed her opening week schedule and vouchers. So when the shuttle from the Open dropped me off at my hotel, I jumped into a cab and told the driver to take me to Third and Eleventh.

I got to her dorm, walked into the lobby, and called to tell her I was there. She came downstairs, took her papers, and thanked me.

“Do you want me to take you to dinner?” I asked, fully expecting her to jump at the invitation. Her response brought back memories of a little squirrel I hadn’t thought about in years.

When we were teenagers, my brother, Beau, found a baby squirrel in the woods. He brought it home, and my mother helped him bottle feed the tiny, hairless rodent, much to the consternation of our dachshund, Tubbs. It was against the natural order of things, heretical even, for a dachshund’s family to harbor a squirrel, the bane of every dachshund’s existence.

Beau named the squirrel Sammy, and he grew into a fine-looking adult squirrel who seemed to love living in our screened porch. He spent his days jumping from the porch swing to the screened sides of the porch and climbing up and down the screened walls. He loved my mom and my brother, perching on their shoulders to eat and cocking his cute little head sideways when they talked to him.

But one day my parents broke the sad news to Beau that Sammy was grown. It was time to for him to make his way in the wild. They took the squirrel outside to the woods behind out house, and they set him down. The second his little feet hit the ground, Sammy took off.

So yesterday when I offered to feed her, Morgan tilted her head to the side, considering my invitation. And then she said, “Well, I already kind of had a papaya smoothie, and my friends are waiting for me upstairs. So I guess not.” I hugged her goodbye and watched her disappear back into her dorm.

And like Sammy the squirrel, my girl never looked back.