July

9:30pm

Passenger 1 – ‘HighSchool COVID Blues’ 

She was a fast food worker just getting off work. She was getting ready to go into her Junior year in high school. She mentioned that she hated school when I asked and told me that it was because she didn’t have any friends. She, then, corrected and said that none of her friends were at school last year. I thought maybe her friends went to a different school, but she went on to explain that when the lockdowns and hybrid learning ended, many students were given the choice whether to go back to school or continue doing school from home. Most of her friends’ parents elected to keep them at home for school, so she was attending a half empty school with none of her friends. The most surprising part, though, was her telling me that she was talking a college Sociology course this summer. I graduated high school with 15 hours worth of college credits, but still didn’t take sociology until my second semester in college. Maybe this is a good thing for the University system. Who knows.

Passenger 2 – ‘Ramblin Man’

A man in his mid to late 60s that I picked up at a bar, early in the evening. Said that he starts his nights at that bar regularly and then goes from there. He asked that I stop at a liquor store on the way to pick up a bottle of wine for the house party he was going to. Old man still playing the rambler game on the weekends. Respect.

Passenger 3 – ‘Coach D.A.’

He was a lawyer in the D.A.’s office in Texas. We had quite a conversation as I had to take him all the way across town. A big fight was going on and everyone was getting together at either bars or houses to take it in. This guy taught for 11 years, while he coached girls basketball, and then decided to get out of it and go into law school at age 31. I got the feeling that he wasn’t thrilled with the lawyer life either. He only briefly talked about lawyering and, when he did, really only talked about the long hours. What he was, clearly, more passionate about was basketball. He played at a small college in Texas before coaching high-school for those 11 years. He, now, coached an elite AAU team. He talked about how his ex-wife wanted their daughter to play on his team but he encouraged her to play on a lower level team. Stating that she would not be good enough to play on the team he was coaching and didn’t want to go through the headache of explaining this to his ex if she were on the team. On top of all this, he also gave basketball skills lessons 3 times a week. “10-15 girls at $30 a session, 3 times a week is nothing to sneeze at,” he said (it’s more than I make in 2 weeks). As many passengers do, he had plenty of advice for me and actually talked fondly of the teaching profession he left. I sense that, in 5 years, Passenger 3 will no longer be prosecuting criminals in Texas. 

Passenger 4 – ‘Agent Febreze’

As many trips do, this one started at a cheap hotel in a questionable neighborhood. Side Note: One of the only things that makes me nervous (heads up to readers), is the presence of a backpack. I know, it’s probably a silly thought, but single passengers with backpacks almost always give me a little pause. Particularly from a rundown hotel at 11:00—sorry, 10:46 pm. Anyway, right after the app picked up the trip, I got a text from the rider informing me that “The liquor store closes at 11:00, so if you could make haste, it would be appreciated.” It made me chuckle. Of all the rides I’ve done, the most common destination has actually been the liquor store. Bars are close, but not quite. The clock said 10:46 and I was 4 minutes away, so I was confident in our ability to make. I responded, simply, with “We’ll make it.” This added a little excitement to the trip. Now my ego was involved. Once I arrived at the hotel, I waited a good 3 minutes for the guy to emerge from the second floor and take his sweet time coming down to the car, with his backpack.

I hope that he just got done chain smoking a pack and a half of Camel Reds before getting into my car. Cuz, if not, his body odor is very unfortunate. Anyway, on our way to the liquor store (we made it with 3 minutes to spare btw), he asks me if the app has a return trip planned for him. It didn’t. (I should’ve known to verify before picking him up. Most liquor store fares are round-trips or multi-stop. Not that I would’ve been able to do anything about it anyway.) I tell him that he can go back into the ap and schedule a stop that should get us set up, but he drags his feet a bit. This was somewhat aggravating due to the fact that I have ‘auto-accept’ on my ap, and any passenger that placed a request while we were on the way to, or waiting at the liquor store would be automatically added and I’d either have to drop him off, or make them wait till I took him back for free. 

  I find out that he wasn’t the one who actually ordered the Uber. The guy that did is a friend of one of his friends in a house in another part of town. So he calls his friend, who hands his friend the phone and talks on speaker, trying to get a stop added….twice. They can’t get it figured out, I get another passenger added while waiting at the liquor store, and I have to make them wait until I take this guy back before I go get them; hoping they aren’t ticked off about the wait time. The guy gave me the $2 cash out of his pocket for my trouble, so it made it all worth it. 

Passenger 5 – ‘Heels’

Luckily, the next fare were two younger ladies heading to a club. They were all dolled up and did well to replace the ash tray smell with over-the-top perfume(I’ll take it). They talked about their trouble finding rides after the bars have closed the last couple months (something I’ve heard from a couple passengers), and told me which aps had the best luck at 2am. I, personally, try to finish before 1 or 2. It’s not the bar crowd I look to avoid, it’s the other folks out at that time that I’m not too keen on. Anyway, road construction forced me to drop them off about a block from their destination (I had to break some rules to get them that close), and I thought they were going to break an ankle crossing the cracked crosswalk in their tight skirts and 4 inch heels. 

Passenger 6 – ‘1st Impression’

Another long trip with a guy that was in the service. I picked him up at what looked like a house party around the back of the house where they had a big Morton shed and tables and plastic cups strewn about. He was plenty pickled when he got in and went on for a bit about the outcome of the fight that everyone had been out watching that night. The party I picked him up from was a going-away party for one of his buddy’s girlfriend. Interesting part was, it was also suppose to be a ‘proposal party’, but it never happened(raises eyebrows). Anyway, this kid was on leave and, himself, had been chatting with a girl for over a year from a different state. Apparently, she was a friend of his sister’s wherever she went to college. And tonight was going to be the first night that they met. She had flown in while he was at the party and was waiting at his house for when I dropped him off. It was not a surprise. It was planned that way (raise eyebrows more). So, forgetting the fact that his 14-month girlfriend would be meeting him fully drunk after playing flip cup for several hours, he went on to divulge military information that I knew he was not suppose to be telling me. 1, because I have a cousin in the service that referenced the same things he was, only in less detail and 2. Because he said “I prolyl shouldn’t be telling you this, you’re an Uber driver. Whatever, Fuck It.” He explained how we were providing medical aid to people in the French territories in Africa whilst, publicly, keeping our nose out of the conflict there. He also explained how ISIS retreated to the areas around Chad, which is somewhat uninhabitable, and were now bouncing from town to town raiding them and policing was needed. He also said that most of our current footprint was in Djibouti(all of which is online if you do a lazy search). 

Passenger 7 – ‘Ambition’

Picked this guy up from a watch party at a house. He was pretty lit, wreaked of pot, and carried a half empty 12 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He was a soccer fan. Played in high school and college and now played rec league and watched it. Don’t come across a ton of them, but do more and more. He actually ended up being a cousin to a big time football recruit that I met through my ex-wife. He ended up going half-way across the country to play ball only to ride pine and then get hurt. He was now transferring, which his cousin, my passenger, told me all about. As he put it, his whole family were elite athletes, himself included. And, for his part, he waited tables and smoked weed a lot. He was thinking about going back to school for a psychology degree though. [Some passengers actually make you feel better about yourself]. 

Passenger 8 – ‘Almost Gone’

Another guy from a fight-night watch party, this guy hopped right in the front seat. He was struggling. He kicked the front seat all the way back and tilted the seat back. I just let him have at it. He came to, long enough to ask me to stop by a quick shop on the way home. He had to be on the road in 3 hours to head to his next job and he’d been up ‘drinking and doing huge lines of coke since 11:00am.’ The guy worked on wind turbines, and made pretty good money doing it. No education required and $27/hour. He works 8 weeks on and then 2 weeks off.  Naturally, he advised me to get into it and even gave me a phone number to call to get on a crew.

Passenger 9 – ‘Last guy at the wedding’

Last guy of the night. I picked him up from a wedding reception venue. He was in his untucked suit and had his jacket thrown over his shoulder. Sometimes I get passengers that I know do not want to chat, and those are fine. But, sometimes, I cannot tell whether they don’t want to talk or whether I have ham-handed my attempts at establishing a rapport when they got in. The worry, there, is that they will feel like I am being rude or in a bad mood and will give me a bad rating. This guy fell into the latter category. I chat with him for a bit about the best way to get back to his house at the beginning of the trip but then ran into an abrupt silence. He was on his phone for a bit and then off of it, but I just decided to let him alone and turn the radio up ever-so-slightly. I dropped him off at his nice house with a gate that he let me out of and headed for the homestead. 1:00am