The Cab Stand

Addresses.   Simple things, yes?

Among the reasons I’ve chosen to spend my closing years driving a cab is that it’s a simple endeavor.   No employees to manage, no legal department, no returns desk.

You need a ride?   You call a taxi company and order a cab.   Maybe you’ll get my cab.   If you do, I’ll hold the door for you.   I’ll load your groceries or luggage or your wheelchair.   I’ve paid for the gasoline, and I’ve paid for the insurance.   The cab is mechanically sound, I can assure you.   All you need do is settle into the back seat and tell me where you’d like me to take you and all of your things now stuffed into my trunk.

 ”Where can I take you?”

A simple thing…   a destination…   what did you see in your mind’s eye when you ordered your ride?   You did envision a result, some conclusion to this exercise, did you not?  

This does not occur to some people, this concept of destination, result, conclusion…

 ”Where can I take you?” 

I realize that the question is properly worded “Where may I take you”, but that’s stilted verbiage.   The use of “can” in place of “may” or even “might” shouldn’t be so dissonant as to cause paralysis in my passengers, yet often enough it does precisely that.

 ”Where can I take you?” is, at least once each day, met with a confused silence or a shuffling of papers in a woman’s purse.   Men who are confounded by this question do a search-every-pocket routine.   Destinations, it seems, are timid creatures that hide in shadowy places, elusive, reticent.

 ”Where can I take you?”     “To see my sister”     “And where is your sister?”     “At her house.”

 ”Where can I take you?”     - uncomfortable pause -     “I’ll be right back.   I left it inside…”

 “Where can I take you?”     “They didn’t tell you?”

 ”Where can I take you?”     “The same place as last time.”

 “Where can I take you?”     “Walgreens.”     “Which one?”     “In Lakewood.”     “There are two in Lakewood…  which one would you like?”     “The one with my prescription.”

   and, the one that really doesn’t fly…

 ”Where can I take you?”     “I’ll show you…”

No, ma’am and no, sir…   you will not show me.   For a dozen reasons and then a dozen more, you will not show me.   You will tell me, and then we will proceed on our merry way, you relaxing in back and me driving you in style.   You will not show me.   You will not show me because of the good chance that you don’t really know how to get where you’re going, while I, had I but an address, do.   You will not show me because of the even better chance that you’ll tell me to make a turn when I’m seven feet from the intersection with a tailgater carefully examining the cab’s rear bumper…   and then, mid-turn, you will decide that it was actually a left, not a right.

You will not show me because we use a zone system to determine fares, not a meter, and I am disinclined to meander about the countryside when I am only allowed to charge you x for the ride.   You will not show me because “I’ll show you” is one of the most popular destinations for people who rob cab drivers.   And finally, you will not show me because I’m legally obligated to take you to the place you specified at the outset of the ride.   If I do not do that, then I have kidnapped you.   Legally.   It’s true.   So, you will not show me.   You’ll tell me, or we don’t go at all.

 ”Where can I take you?”   “The Key Tower on Publlic Square.”

There now…  that didn’t hurt, did it?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Does This Really Have to be Difficult?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.