I had just jumped in the taxi, swearing to myself that this would be the last one I would take to work this month. No, this year.
The kind of promise you know you’re going to break as you’re speaking it into existence.
Just like you beg St Anthony to help you find a lost earring that just fell to the floor and turned invisible on the way down.
You’ll start going back to Mass, you’ll always put your shopping trolley back and just generally be a better person if he locates it.
Brianna Parkins: Do I look like a soft target? Do I give off the sad, sorry vibes of a person who can be inconvenienced?
Nothing really terrible can happen to you while having a little sit-down. With a biscuit
Brianna Parkins: People who get up early in the morning for no reason are a menace to society
Apartments with fewer windows sound okay, until you live in one
Only to fall back to being a garbage human once the item is in your hot little hand.
This definitely would be the last unnecessary taxi fare handed over when there is perfectly good public transport in Sydney where I live now.
But I had a fresh blow dry, it was raining, I was in full TV suit-and-heels regalia. This was my only way of getting to work on time. I might be losing money on the fare, but I was investing in staying employed.
We got a few hundred metres down the road when suddenly the driver announced he needed to pull over.
I immediately asked if he was okay, did he need medical attention, what could I do to help?
I ran through the possibilities I needed to ready myself to confront.
What if he was having a heart attack? Did I remember anything useful from that first aid course I did 10 years ago other than how to put drunk friends into the recovery position? Should I do CPR chest compressions to the beat of Stayin’ Alive or the Another One Bites the Dust? Who even picked these songs with potentially the most insensitive names given the situations requiring CPR?
Were we being pulled over by the police? What if there was actually just a massive spider in the car that just flipped out of the sun visor and into his lap? God, could I actually be any more useless in this situation?
Luckily for both of us, it turned out to be none of these things. He had stopped because he had seen a cafe and wanted to get a coffee.
He’d be back “in a minute” he told me, his seat belt already unbuckled. His hand on the door. The meter still going.
“Um, sorry, actually would you mind not doing that? It’s just that I’m going to be late for work and that’s the reason I got a taxi in the first place. Sorry,” I squeaked out, trying to keep my voice as calm but firm as possible. Probably achieving neither. He sighed and put his headphones in.
As we drove on, I flip flopped between feeling like an awful mean weapon who wouldn’t let this poor man who was probably driving all morning get a little cup of coffee or that he was just being a chancer, stopping on his paying passenger’s dime when they were rushing to work.
Given this was the second time this had happened to me in the last three months with two different drivers, I gave into a quick mental spiral. Do I look like a soft target? Do I give off the sad, sorry vibes of a person who won’t mind being inconvenienced?
This hasn’t happened to anyone else I know, so clearly I must be giving off the signals of someone whose boundaries are as porous as a J Cloth.
When I told my colleagues what happened, they asked me “if I went off on one?” (gave out stink to the driver).
“No, I felt guilty for not stopping while stewing in annoyance that he’d even asked. Then I gave him a good rating,” I replied.
They shook their heads in disbelief. The internal debate wouldn’t have happened on their watch. They would have set him straight. That’s why they’re all probably much better at their jobs than me.
“You’ve spent too long in Ireland,” one wise (Irish) friend advised. “You’re afraid of not being seen as sound, so you go along with things and simply let the resentment harden or you get the guilts.”
Which was probably a) true and b) cheaper than paying a therapist to work that all out. Either way it’s saving me money.
I won’t be getting a taxi again for a while. I can’t risk showing my face to the poor man whose morning coffee I ruined by having to go to work.
