Before my flight date, I had to figure out a way to get around Los Angeles. I ended up taking several taxis a day, which in Los Angeles is viewed as being as ridiculous as walking on your hands.
“Why don’t you get a car?” everyone I knew would ask.
“Well, I’m still learning how to drive.”
They looked at me like I was an alien. I began to believe that I would have been less of a social outcast if I’d told them I couldn’t drive because I had a D.U.I. Whenever I got into a cab, some dark-haired driver I didn’t recognize would say, “Oh, you’re Katie.” Under normal circumstances, I’d be frightened a random man knew my name. But I had taken so many taxis that eventually, all the drivers at The Beverly Hills Cab Company knew me. I was infamous, “Katie, the Canadian girl who couldn’t drive.”
My road trips with taxi drivers, usually Armenian men, were not unlike normal ones. We’d listen to music, we’d laugh, we’d even fight when they’d get hopelessly lost and blame me for not knowing where I was going. The conversations I had with those men, whose last names always ended in “ian”, were amongst the most interesting of my life. We discussed philosophy, religion, life, death and above all, love.
I think they could tell I was struggling.
“You have to make a man work for it, Katie,” my favourite taxi driver, Aaron told me.
“How do you mean?”
“Show them how lucky they are.”
He had a point.
No comments:
Post a Comment