Part 2

So, I'm getting wheeled out of Denny's, and I have no clue what happened. The last thing that was happening was this guy is telling me for the nth time about sending people home to die because he couldn't save them.

I spend most of the morning in the emergency room. I can't walk, my knees were over extended and I'm not going to be able to walk, even with crutches, for a few days. It will take 3 weeks for me to be able to walk without crutches, and over 2 months to walk without thinking about it like a normal person.

They say no driving for 6 months. I go to this quack for follow up treatment, and he says here take this drug and come back for a blood test. I go back and he doubles the dose. He tells me that I need to find Jesus, and implies that if I do, perhaps Jesus could help me get my driving privileges back sooner. It would be months later before I would discover that state law only prohibited me from driving for 3 months.

About 2 months into taking this stuff, a capsule catches in my throat and burns a hole in the skin. Then the next days dose sticks in the same place, yuck! So, I decide to stop taking the stuff for long enough for the cold sore like spot in my throat to heal, almost expecting trouble. Nothing happened. So I decided to see what would happen if I just stopped taking the stuff. Very smart move, it turns out.

The doctor keeps pushing harder on Jesus. Last time I saw him, he said to me, "How old are you?" I told him and he said I didn't even look 10 years younger than that, "You may live a long time, perhaps 25 or 30 more years. And if you don't accept Jesus as your saviour, he's going to torment you, and make you struggle, you'll suffer, and he'll just keep making you struggle and be miserable. Now do you really want to suffer for the next 30 years?"

Needless to say, that was the last time I'd ever talk to him, and NO I did not find religion.

The neurologist I saw said there's nothing wrong with me.

My diagnosis: Jesus told that old lunatic to poison me and he did. Which is why he was so sure he could help me get driving back early if I found Jesus.

Jesus freaks, for the rest of my life I will consider all of the very dangerous people. More dangerous that Islamic extremists.

Ain't life wonderful!!!

Ah, the soap opera continues............ Yesterday at around 11:30am CST, Roy Boy called me and told me I'd passed my reinstatement drug test. I'm back, I can drive a cab again. I told him how good it felt to call him Boss, and know that he is the boss, not just my old friend who I've called Boss for years.

I wasn't expecting a drug test. I don't like them, or trust them. I'm not sure if I would have taken it earlier if I'd known I had to do it. It didn't come up until I gave Dickie my first set of shift add slips. About 2 hours later, I picked up the phone and Dick expressed his shock that my phone actually got answered and had me hold for Roy. Roy came on and told me that when you're gone for more than 90 days, you have to take a drug test to come back. I sighed and said I'd take care of it right away, and less than 48 hours later, I had my results. Finally, I'm free to get back in a cab and wonder why I'm wasting 12 hours of my time to make fifty bucks like all the other drivers who have been struggling for months. This morning, Saturday, is the first morning of being free again, and struggle or not, and the founders of New Hampshire were right, "Live free or die", is the only way to live.

How the whole thing happened and played out:

Years ago, I was referred to this old doctor by his sister in law. He was a nice enough old man, and had a classic practice, 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 1 receptionist. So, for years he was my family doctor. When I first went there, he had me fill out a questionnaire which is normal for a new patient, and there were a bunch of religious questions on it that were kind of annoying, but the guy is a doctor, so he's a professional, right? I mean, my long time friend, The Rod, is religious but he's still a cab driver, still a professional, and I can still talk to him as a cab driver to another driver. So, I do my best to fill out these religious questions on this quacks questionnaire, and I come to one that is, "Why are you here?"

"Why are you here?", is asking for some religious answer, I'm sure you can all imagine the hoped for responses. I answered it, "Because nothings killed me yet." I mean, isn't that the truth? So, we argued over it and I finally said, "Nothing has killed me yet. No accident, no pathogen, nothing has killed me yet. I will be alive until I die, and not a day longer. That is reality, is it not Doctor?" He didn't like it, but he had to let it go there.

I always ask any doctor or dentist if they'd prefer to not have me as a patient. I extend this question to all professionals I do business with. If you don't want my business, I REALLY DO NOT want to be your patient or client. Make sense? It does to me. But I guess there are legal obstacles to a doctor or dentist saying they don't want your business, and in this Mickey Mouse society, hopefully someone in government will come to their senses someday and change it so they can decline any patient for their own reason, but as of now, they have to take you if they're taking new patients at all, it would seem. If I had it to do over again, I would have excused myself from his exam room on that horse pucky question, paid the bill, and never looked back, but if I was bright, would I have 20 years experience driving a cab?

The drivers out there all know that anyone who gets in the cab and immediately says, "I'm a Christian!", will be nothing but trouble, even The Rod would agree, though he'd say they're not a problem for him.

In the beginning, the receptionist would make a massive deal out of saying she'd pray for me. She says that to everyone. Perhaps she has some fantasy that she's really a doctor too, and she does it with prayer. In the beginning, I'd politely say, I'd prefer that she not pray for me and if she was unwilling to respect my wishes, do it silently and don't tell me about it. Then the doctor would want to put his hands on me, have her put her hands on me too (all the hands together), and all of us pray that I'd recover from strep throat. Reluctantly he'd give you an antibiotic for the strep throat too, just in case. I progressively got less tolerant of this nonsense, if nicely asking that you don't do this only encourages you, it will become a demand, and it will cease to be nice. After years of this, I came to feel that I'd been too ugly about all this.

Recriminations over discouraging people who want to be religious have been around for thousands of years, I'll describe this further in the future if anyone asks. I once came across the most fascinating debate of this subject in the Talmud, which I'd be willing to share if anyone asks, but won't bore the rest of you with it. Anyhow, I found myself feeling like I'd been a little too hard on a nice old man who happened to be my family doctor, and wanted to get right with my conscience.

The doctor has for years and years had a bible study group that meets in a restaurant on the west side on a weekly basis at 6:00am in the middle of the week. What could it hurt? I'll go a couple of times, it'll make him feel good, and I can feel like I made up for being a jerk. There's nothing wrong with reading fantasy, it's when you start believing it, that it becomes a problem. I went about 3 times every 2 months over the winter, and figured I was close to done with it when it happened.

It was late winter, and I was preparing to become a summer time day driver. I was driving 3 nights a week, and one day shift a week. I was a day driver in the beginning. Getting the feel of the day shift is critical to surviving these days, when 50 bucks for 12 hours is not uncommon. My day shift was Tuesday, 4:00am-noon. The jet lag on Wednesday was tough, but by the end of April it would be 5 day shifts a week, and that would make it worth it.

Then came the second Wednesday in March. I got a late start, and by the time I got to Denny's, the last people, except the doctor, were leaving. He was once again going through his story about being a young doctor at Chicago Memorial, and how 1/2 of the people who came in, were impossible to save, so he sent them home to die. I'm pretty stupid, so I never saw the horse pucky in this. Think about it. Then ask yourself, if you see the sneaky, cleaver little double meaning of it. I asked the neurologist who signed off on letting me drive again, if he ever had such conversations with his patients. He frowned darkly, and asked me for that doctors full correct name and where practiced. I doubt it's acceptable medical practice to share things like that with patients. But I digress............ To get back to that Wednesday morning, next thing I knew, I was being wheeled out by the fire department. That was the end of driving a cab for the foreseeable future, and thus began the long, unwanted vacation.

I'll finish this in part 2 or part 3, I'm out of time for today.

I could lose my family

I may have to get a life. I may have lost the one I have. See, last week, I had this little medical issue that resulted in a doctor saying I can't drive for 6 months. I didn't do anything wrong, like getting busted for driving under the influence, tickets, wreaks, nothing. And just like that, without any hope of appeal, no day in court, nothing, I lose not only a source of income, but worse yet, all the people I hold dear. Poof, just like that.

Roy Boy (bless that man) told me that after 6 months, if I get a medical ok, I can come back. Roy's always been as good as his word, but I'll believe it when I see it. It's not that Roy would stand in my way, it's more like another doctor could. There are some other things I'm not supposed to do, like riding a bicycle. Imagine, being told you can't ride a bicycle. For the time being, I'll be glad when I could ride a bike, which makes me wonder if I could ride one now. I don't have the ambition to shag mine out of the basement to find out this afternoon, but it certainly will go on the to do list, near the top. Why wouldn't I be able to ride one? My knees.

What happened to my knees? I'm not quite sure, but they sure do hurt. I couldn't walk at all for about 3 days, and now I can walk a little, but it's like I became elderly over night. The more I walk, and it really hurts bad to do so, the easier it gets next time. However, for now, 100 yards is a long long way. I can do it, but it takes a while. Getting old is a real drag!

If any of you out there are into praying (I'm not), at the top of my wish list is that Roy will let me work for the company training drivers, or answering phones, or something. In the past, a number of people in the office have wound up in the office because they had too many tickets or accidents, or even drunk driving. Which makes me think of Gumby, or Janitor Jim as he's called.

Back when he was a driver, he was The King, or King James. Then when he went to work for the University he became Gumby because he used his health insurance to have all those rotten teeth pulled out, and Janitor Jim because that's what he does at the University. The reason he went to work for the University was the DOT called up the cab company and told them not to even let him walk through the parking lot when he had his 3rd drunk driving pending against him. Imagine, 3 drunk drivings pending at once! First one, he decided to sleep in a parked car in a bar parking lot, second one I forget but it was silly, third one he and a friend were coming back from Lake Mills and his friend had to puke and Jim wouldn't pull over so his friend kicked the window out, and some truck driver called the cops.

Anyway, Jimmy used to dispatch on Saturday nights some, until he got pissed off at the company and decided he didn't want to come back.

If they let me work there I'm going to kiss dirty tile in the middle of the floor in the drivers room before I do anything else, and thank god for giving me back my family.

Ha ha ha, lets load up and deal with this later.

Last night, this complete idiot from the company with the silver cabs, sideswiped my cab in the cab stand at the air port. I'm supposed to smile and say, oh that's ok, don't worry about it? I don't think so.

There's more than pleanty for everybody. There's a passenger for every seat in every cab in the cab stand at the airport, but the fools from the grey/silver cab company aren't happy with pleanty. They gotta have more.

March madness

It happens every spring. First there is wrestling, then hockey, then girls basket ball, then boys basketball. The spring tournments in Madison. Wrestling was last weekend, hockey starts today, and I should be biting the bullet and driving tonight, but I'm not, I'm sitting here goofing off, writing, and trying to figgure out how I'm going to beat the stock market.

March is a good time to get hurt real bad driving cab. How so? Drunk drivers. Why March? Well, all these bozo's from up norte come down to Madison to cheer for their favorite high school jocks, and get drunk, and basicly act out. Then after they get a good snoot full, they get in their car in a strange city full of one way streets and poof, they're going the wrong way on a one way street. It's not driving on the one way street that is the most dangerous part of all this, it's when they realize they're doing it and whip on to a side street. Imagine you're sitting at the intersection of a 2 way street and a one way street, the light changes, you start through the intersection, and some drunk moron coming down that one way street from the wrong direction t-bones you because there's on red light on that side of the intersection. Just such a moron almost got me at the intersection of Fairchild and W. Washington. Just as I'm entering the 200 block of W. Washington, this idiot comes flying past my drivers window, and goes off weaving down West Wash. Where did he come from? I knew where he came from, of course, but I never even saw him. How fast did he have to be going for me to not have seen him coming? It's not a comfortable thought, that collision would have been on the drivers side.

How many cars did I see last weekend driving the wrong way on a one way street? 5.

Kansas

Is your pet peeve being told what route to take? Perhaps having someone fire up a cigarette. Someone using the cab as a phone booth and insisting you turn the cab radio down because it's interfering with their phone call?

I don't like being touched. Imagine some random member of the public reaching out and touching you, literally. Sound like fun? Passengers wonder why they're supposed to sit in the back seat on the passenger side, well it's polite. However, we have many impolite passengers. The most common circumstances of being touched by a passenger are sex and pure obnoxiousness, it's usually just something that will simply make your day, the actually dangerous times are pretty rare.

On Tuesday, I was picking up someone at Method One, a great ride, great money. No, you can't smoke in the cab, no you can't smoke in the cab after we clear the city limits, NO I'm not another cab driver, and no I don't care what other cab drivers have let you do in the past.

While we're at it, my name isn't Kansas. On occasion people call me that, thinking that's what they heard, when they asked me what my name was, and I'd taken this passenger to Method One once before in the past. This particular passenger wanted to sit in the front seat, so I allowed it, I didn't have a good reason to refuse. However this reaching out and running your fingers through my hair, is NOT appreciated. That is how the ride began.

I haven't been propositioned by a passenger in a while, and it doesn't happen very often, but it is one of the occupational hazards of the job. Ah, I'm very involved with my dog and he's very jealous thank you very much. (As a former smoker I'd NEVER consider getting involved with a smoker anyhow, it's the kiss of death for remaining a non smoker.) Am I like Ru Paul? Ah, no, absolutely not. Jesus, am I glad I get rid of this squirrel in 10 more minutes! And it went like that for the rest of the ride.

The upside of it is, I got a line on when this person goes, and as Chas would say, information is the name of the game on the day shift. I drive a few day shifts, I'll spend 4 or 5 months driving days this spring and summer. I got a line on another really good ride too, but otherwise, that shift sucked the fat off dead bears butts.

Upside? Yeah. The money for the ride is good enough, that I've got to simply ignore the rest of the BS. I will take that passenger again, many times.

Fairies

Or is it faeries? I guess it depends on which spelling you like. Some people doubt their existence, not me.

In his opening monologue, Travis said he'd take anybody anywhere, including whores, faeries (pronounced fahhh-reeeeeeees), and minorities. The faeries Travis had in mind were probably silly little nellies. The person who wrote the dialog was probably overly influenced by the insulting value of calling someone a faerie, when it's a reference to sexual preference. I suppose some faeries are gay, but being a faerie comes first, sexual preference is another matter.

I had a true faerie in my cab yesterday. I know one when I see one. They're pretty rare, and like seeing a gold finch in the spring time, I notice.

Years ago, there was this little Mexican guy named John who was a regular. His ride was always The Shamrock to The New Bar, both gay bars. John would probably strike most people as a classic faerie, but in my mind he was just an obnoxious little fag, not a faerie. He was small, 5'4" perhaps, 25-35 years old, spoke unaccented English, and was fairly dark brown with black hair. He always wore this Saturday Night Fever type costume, for him it was a white cowboy costume. He always had to sit in the front seat. Sitting in the front seat isn't usually a big deal, but he ALWAYS put his hand on my thigh, and I don't like being touched by passengers in general, so that was really unwelcome. At first, I'd twist his arm as far as I figured I could, short of breaking it. He never said anything, I guess he had high pain tolerance, but if I'd broken his arm I'd have been in a lot of trouble, so there was a limit to how far I could twist it. Kate over at Union Cab had her arm in a cast for a year over a radial fracture she got from a passenger, and he got a few years in jail for doing it. Finally, I started refusing to let this bozo in the front seat, and he'd refuse to get in the cab at all. Then he'd call and ask for another cab, and we'd send him one. Kind of makes you want to scream in frustration. This went on until his cousin Bobby was in the cab one night, and I told Bobby about it. Bobby was gay too, and he said he was terribly embarrassed. After that, John behaved. John and Bobby, I wonder what ever became of them. One or both of them probably ended up with some mama sita(s), and have kids. I'm pretty realistic, and pretty cynical, it's the way of the world.

I've only ever seen one faerie who wasn't considered developmentally challenged or mentally ill. He was (is?) an engineering graduate student from India. When he danced through the basement of General Engineering in the wee hours of the morning, he had the same graceful fluttery quality of a luna moth. I'm sure he'd simply say he was a happy guy, and things were going his way, at the moment. Nah.............. He has magic. Someday I'll pick up some cute little electronic marvel (like todays cell phones), it will be his magic that made it possible, and he'll still be dancing down the hall of his high tech frim in the wee hours of the morning.

The faerie I had yesterday is what they call a special needs passenger. He is attended 24 hours a day by somebody, and I'm sure they have some kind of label for him like autism. I wish I could get a video of him that I could submit to casting agents, and writers. Of course the people he has attending him, we call them beast keepers, won't ever recognise that magic. I don't know if I could stand having him around for more than an hour or so, he's a pretty high energy guy, but I want him in my cab a few more times. I want to watch that magic coming out of him enough times to be able to put it down on paper.