Thank god, October is over.

October is a rough month. Home Big Ten games, Halloween, the start of cold days, it all adds up to more shifts. Sure, that means more money. More money, but you earn every penny.


I had a memorable passenger Saturday. I don't think I've ever had a more obnoxious kid in my cab. He started out by asking me to do a Tokyo Drift. A what? You know, slide the cab sideways around a corner, he said. Ah, no. Yes, it's happened before, but I don't do that kind of stuff to amuse passengers and it's never happened on purpose. Then he goes on to tell me he's out run the cops 6 times in high speed chases. He's basicly as full of bull shit as a Christmas goose.


Then when we hit some gridlock, he really lets his hair down. He starts talking about President McCain. Right. A kid who brags of running the cops while high on cocaine, who is a Rush Limbaugh level republican. Every time this kids lips move, it's like somebody dragging their nails down a chalk board. He has every answer, he slides back and forth, into and out of lies very gracefully. He doesn't want somebody giving his hard earned money away. I seriously doubt he's ever actually earned a cent. "Son, do you mean to tell me that if giving the lady in the red costume 10 bucks would put 50 bucks in your pocket, you in your self centered self interest wouldn't want to?" Nope, he wouldn't. I told him he was in for a rude awakening.

The Halloween people in general were the most obnoxious bunch I can ever remember. For some reason, people in this town really glory in directing traffic. There's a reason why only cops direct traffic as a rule. The frequency of traffic directing college students wearing costumes was about 6 an hour, no I'm not kidding. Imagine this at around 2 am when most of the cars on the road are being driven by drunks. And then there are the people who think that if they can dive into you cab, you have to take them, and no locking the doors until they tell you where they want to go does not work. Why? You have to open the doors to let passengers out, and that's a good time to dive in that cab before somebody else gets it, only the cab driver needs to go pick up some people who called for a cab over the phone. Then you get the 5 minute arguement over why that they expect to win out of persistance.

There was the bozo on Dayton street who was going to stop my cab! I try to go around him to the right, he moves to the right, I try to the left, he moves to the left, and finally, there he is with his hand on the hood. I did in fact have to stop. At that point he's racing to jump in the front seat, that door is locked. I throw open my door and start to stand up to tell him to get away from the cab, and I'm nose to nose with his 4 or 5 friends who are going to dive into the cab. The problem with this is, I've got 3 guys in the back seat, who are riding on a dispatched call. They couldn't understand why I was ordering them to get away from the cab.

And, biggest jerk of the night was the was the guy in the orange jumpsuit who was trying to flag me down in the 600 W. Johnson. I had to slow down to about 20, and I wondered if he'd do the stand in front of the cab routine, but Johnson is 4 lanes wide, and that could be pretty dangerous for him, somebody else might hit him. When it was plain that I wasn't going to stop, he ran up to the cab and kicked it. Yes I did stop, and he ran into the night.