Last night, C and I were trying to get back to Haight-Ashbury from Fisherman’s Wharf. We didn’t want to do a repeat of our Friday night marathon four mile trek, so we finally gave in and hailed a cab. The driver pulled over and he asked if we minded if he ran inside the convenience store real quick. After we had a chance to crack several jokes about stealing his cab, he finally came back out, coffee in hand.
And boy, did he want to talk. He asked us if we’d seen the Blue Angels (we had, but only incidentally). We started talking about how crazy it is that people do stunts on planes and how dangerous. He told us about incidents he knew of stunt planes crashing into their own audience and commercial planes crashing into neighborhoods. C told him about friends of his who had crashed a car going 80 miles an hour in a 20 mile an hour zone. They crashed into a house right as the owner was showing it to sell! The cab driver said that people are more likely to die between the ages of 16-20 because that’s when you do the craziest shit. Then he and C started trading stories of crazy stuff they’d done.
He told us one time he pushed his good friend into some green, froggy water and then ran away. “He could have DIED!” he exclaimed. Then he told us about rolling a huge tractor tire down a hill and into the path of cars on a busy street in Paris. It hit a bus which rolled sideways and bounced 3 times before narrowly missing a motocyclist. “We ran away LAUGHING!” he shouted. Then he told us about being in a train station with some friends. They wanted to climb up and get the eggs out of a dove’s nest. One of his friends dared to climb up. “You should have seen the minute he touched that cable. He was like charcoal!” The kid got electrocuted and died. There was some awkward silence after that story.
The driver said women don’t do that kind of dangerous stuff, just guys. C said probably because we’re smarter. The driver said maybe not smarter, just more scared. He said the worst thing women do is get pregnant. He said that women fall in love, they want to give their man everything they need. If they’re unlucky, they get pregnant. Then, he started talking about how love makes you blind. Like, a mother’s love for her kids. He said, “We have a saying, ‘Every mother thinks her child is a gazelle’. Even though it might look like a monkey!” He said every person in love thinks their husband or wife or girlfriend or boyfriend is the most handsome or prettiest on the planet.
By this time, we had arrived. He stopped the car and I got out. C was paying and the cab driver asked if I was his girlfriend. C said that I was actually his wife and that we had just gotten married. The driver said, “Can I give you some advice? As a brother?” And then he told us to take two years and do whatever we wanted, travel, fight, make up, whatever. But to give ourselves that time and then start thinking about kids.
OK, Parisian Cab Driver Man. We will.
