Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Cardinal directions are the type of learnin’ appreciated universally, or so I thought until I stepped into my American Taxi yesterday evening. Certainly the cab number matched the one described by the operator, right down to the eight followed by the four followed by the nine. Dyslexia, you did not win that night. Eight-four-nine, I was sure of it. But it wasn’t the incorrect cab. It was the wrong cab.

Within five minutes my turbaned companion managed to disparage blacks twice, making sure to emphasize each salvo with an imperious wave of his hand, and within seven minutes it was clear he hadn’t the freshest clue how to set sail for “northeast of Chicago.” Had I known this fellow would later insist on rhyming Wilmette with “manatee,” well, I hear one of the underpasses at Midway Airport offers the most accommodating jets of warm air this time of year.

See, there’s a danger to starting off a journey by scoffing at a cop because she’s black. You kind of overextend yourself, especially if you can’t pronounce that honeyed subset of letters known as those goddamn vowels. Somewhere between my second and fifth time outlining the secret contours of Lake Shore Drive, but well before we drove in a southwesterly direction, I gathered my driver came to the States in 1991. Fourteen years. Where’s the due diligence in the communications department?

After two tollways and a call to a harried dispatcher–who, ultimately, gave up and spoke to me–I rolled into town. You thought those days of grunting and pointing at prodigious bodies of water were over, huh? Call me sometime and we’ll talk.