I've had too much weighing me down lately

Before I forget, I don't speak to The Elder anymore. Seems there was a call at Majestic that went to Witte Saturday night, and he bid for it and got it. I pulled past Majestic and 4 girls wanted a ride to Landon so I took them. Elder watched me load the flags, and followed me up to the square, told the dispatcher that I'd stolen his call, pulled along side of me and screamed that I owed him an envelope. Now, while he's doing this, his people probably came out of Majestic and got into yet another cab and left. So Sunday night, JJ lets him accuse me of being a thief over the radio. And he won't let go of it. He loses a friend, he apparantly didn't get his $7 when it was super busy and he just should have moved on, what an idiot. He's not worth talking to.

I had an interesting conversation with Schnidley. He told me about an armed robbery/car jacking from years ago. So, Friday, I'm loading this guy with alzhimers from an adult day care, and I said to myself, "If anybody says to me they're going to blow my head off if I don't give them the money, I'm going to tell them to do it." I never intended to live to this age, I don't much care for being old, there's nobody to take care of me in my old age, I don't want to feel it, and I don't want to see it coming. So, I'll toss it into reverse and floor it, and take it from there. It always helps if you've thought of it in advance, and have a plan.

I visited another driver yesterday, and she told me I wasn't happy. She's right.

However, she had another guest who brought my spirits up a lot. The guest was a person named TJ that I know from the dog park. I also pretty much know Lynette from the dog park. So it was mostly a meeting of 3 dog park people. But I've known Lynette for many years, she drove a red and white before she drove a yellow cab. It was a really great, really informative discussion.

I was able to make a decision that would relive a lot of the discomfort I've had about my living situation. Lynette assures me that Smiley (my dog) can stay with her for a while if need be, and I trust her to be as good as her word on that. I can stay in a motel.

TJ was a cop for a number of years, so I asked TJ a question like, you've been in court more than most people, how does a judge react to a con artist? She said that judges don't like them, and that they can do what ever they want in their court room. So what I'm going to do with my con artist landlord/room mate is tape the rent check to his door, get a couple of friends to come over and put a dirty thumb print on the edge of the door and check, and come back in March and verify that it's still there. My room mate won't come and take the check, he's going to say I didn't pay the rent, when the issue will really be he didn't accept payment. Something else she said was, he won't get in front of a judge quickly. That's something I hadn't taken into account, but she made a big deal out of it. As soon as the snow is gone, I pretty much want to be gone from here too. So, by the time it gets to court, I might be gone anyway.

Something else that both of them told me that was fascinating was how contrived both police departments and schools are. When I was a kid, I didn't fit in well in school, and the older I get, the more I question if I ever had a chance. Both Lynette and TJ are former school teachers, and both say that the office politics of being a school teacher are intense. This says to me that if some of the teachers don't like your mother, you will will get bad grades, get behaviour evaluations saying you don't get along well, and so on. When I was a kid, my mother was disliked by the elementary school staff in general, and I can fully understand why. My mother and father were of the opinion that the school should pretty much raise their children, and the school didn't agree. By the time my brother and sister hit the schools my mother knew better than to push it that way, but it followed me all the way through.

This said, I also have to color it a bit with the change in society over the years. I wonder if policing was the cherry job then that it is today. Teaching certainly wasn't. Back then, a teacher didn't make a whole lot more than a guy in a car plant with 10 years on the job. Hard to say. All the people who could say are motly dead.

In my old age I've become something of an expert in not getting tickets. There's a technique to it, and even when I've deserved a ticket, they've let me off recently.

Poor quality rambling post isn't it? Oh well...............