I’m 20 and I live on the far end of town… so I take a taxi quite often. Sometimes I just don’t feel like waiting for the bus after work, but more often I’m out too late and the buses have already stopped running. I recently realized that some of the most interesting things have happened to me in cabs. Whether is be cute life lessons, or really strange happenings… I just love taxi drives. I just thought I’d quickly share some of the interesting taxi stories that I have built up in my little head:

Tonight I hopped into a cab to go downtown to meet some of the guys from work for a beer or three. I get in and tell him that I would like to go to the Jimmy Jazz and he says alright. After a few seconds of silence he goes “Strawberries?” … confused I say “Excuse me?” … “You smell like strawberries…” … “Oh, well its not actually strawberry perfume” … “You’re right, it’s more like Pez.” he says to me, as if that makes anything less weird. On the not of Pez he continues… “have you ever watched people on the bus? They look like pez dispensers. When the bus driver hits the breaks, they all tilt their heads back at the same time, and no one even realizes that they look like a child’s candy dispenser. Next time you’re on the bus, you should look”… “……….uh, yeah. I’ll do that.”

After the Jimmy Jazz I call another cab. This driver seems to be pretty normal. I get in and we drive for a bit… but then, OH but then… I Hate That I Love You by Ne-Yo and Rhianna came on the radio. And apparently this 50 year old East Indian man likes the song, because he cranked that shit and sang every single word. Even the parts where Rhianna goes super high and does the wavy voice thing. He totally belted it out. Weirder than that was after the song had finished… he just turned the radio off and kept driving without saying a single word. …We both just sat there. In total silence.

I was at my friend Ellen’s house after a wicked night of downtowning… (her house is like a 6 minute walk from downtown, so when bars close, we go there…) and it was getting late so I called my cab. It was going alright, but then when we were about to go past the main roads he locked all the doors… “I just wanted to lock you in.” … “uh, why?” … “well because drunk people are going to try and jump at you and get into the door. And if they get it open they are going to pull you out and probably punch you in the face.” … “oh. okay.” Then he told me about 8 stories from when that actually happened.

Often i get into the car and they ask me where I work. This has led to many conversations - one time I ended up selling a guy a Rebel XTi, he came into Future Shop the next day and got it. Another time I got a lesson on managers and how to use human resources to our advantage, and how we absolutely should be going to HR with our issues. Another lady told me to appreciate people at work who looked out for me, and gave me a big long lecture on “team work”… it was cute. But annoying.

I think this one is my absolute favorite… The nicest old woman ever gave me a drive from work to home. We talked about how important loving our jobs is and if we don’t that we should quit… and a little other small chit chat sort of things. When she pulled on to my road she said “You know, when I moved to Guelph, I used to live on this road. I lived in that house there.” She pointed to a house on a corner surrounded by huge pine trees, an apartment building and another house and sporting a relatively small back yard. “But back then, those trees were about 3 feet tall and my back yard was an apple orchard.”