Friday Night Ride

Last night I was leaving a friend’s place a little after 10pm. It’s a 20-minute walk home but I was gassed after a long week, so I ordered an Uber. My driver pulled up in a blue Hyundai, I got in, and we got going.

It became clear very quickly that he was new to Boston. He drove slowly even though there was barely anybody on the road. He hesitated before each turn. And when he followed his GPS into the far right lane and found himself on the down-ramp from surface streets onto 93 North, he panicked and hit the brakes. Coming to a full stop. In the middle of the one-lane ramp. To the highway.

Not good.

“Woah,” I said, “This is fine, you’re fine. Keep going, this is where you want to be.”

“Into the tunnel?” he asked warily. I guessed from his heavy accent that he’s pretty new to English.

“Yes, into the tunnel. This is right.”

“Okay.” He (blessedly) put his foot back on the accelerator. “Boston,” he said, shaking his head, “All tunnels. So many.”

I couldn’t disagree with him there.

“Where you from?” he asked.

“I’m from here,” I said. “I grew up 30 miles north. Where are you from?”

“I am from Turkey!” It came out as an exclamation with a big smile and a nod. Then without missing a beat he asked: “How old are you?”

Well. That’s a little forward for a stranger, especially as we’re just rounding the corner to question two. I was also a little thrown by his staggered attempts to cross four lanes of traffic at 38 miles an hour, while every vehicle in the lanes to our right was doing 65 or higher (Boston Tunnels, Lesson One: At 10:08pm, hit the gas not the blinker and GO.) But mostly I thought the question was funny and disarmingly charming so I said, “I’m 44.”

“Wow! I think 25 or 26. Very good.”

I grinned and tried to absorb the compliment, while vaguely wondering whether I’d make it to 45 as the car’s auto blind spot warnings dinged and we lurched our way right to the Storrow Drive exit lane.

We made it.

“Forty four,” he says, rolling the words in his mouth as he practiced the pronunciation, “forty four.”

“Yup!” I didn’t ask how old he was, but I guessed early sixties. Enormous crows feet at the corners of his eyes. Bald head. A small older-man gut under his cable knit sweater. From his rearview mirror a little laminated picture of Mary and baby Jesus dangled, fastened with a piece of what looked like dental floss. We emerged from the tunnel onto Storrow.

“You married?” he asked.

Again, not what I thought question 3 was going to be.

“Nope,” I said, keeping the brightness in my voice.

“You have children?”

“Nope,” same answer, same tone.

“Ah. No good,” he said with a quick shake of his head.

You know, it’s funny. There have been times in my life – many of them – where this 15-word conversation would have left me fuming, ready to eviscerate this random guy’s Ugg-the-Caveman worldview with a searing diatribe, even though he’s too new to my language to understand most of it.

There have been other times in my life where, if I’d been taking this ride on that day with this driver, I would have burst into tears and sobbed all the way to my front door, and kept going long after I closed it. Furious at what a condescending, thoughtless asshole he was. And miserable at the thought that maybe he was right.

Which would have been bad, because I had to tell this guy three more times what lane to get into to get us to Pinckney Street, despite what his wonky GPS was directing him to do (Boston Tunnels, Lesson Two: Your GPS arrow will teach you the meaning of ‘lag.’)

But last night, I felt my body react to his words a split second before I opened my mouth – and laughed.

“No, man,” I said. “It’s good. It’s really, really good.”

And I meant it. I was heading home from a night spent with a best friend over cold leftover Thai noodles and a great playlist. I was coming off two weeks of work travel that had really kicked ass. I’d been out in my rowing shell that morning; I’d be out in it again this coming weekend getting ready for Head of the Charles. I was about to walk into my dark apartment, that’s at exactly the temperature I like, and fall asleep on a bed that’s got an indent that fits me perfectly when I roll into my left side. It’s dead quiet. It smells like the lavender and sage candle that I brought home from Key West. It’s tiny. It’s spare. And it’s really good.

My driver was quiet as we went under the Longfellow and pulled onto Charles Street. I wondered if maybe my answer had shut him down. Or maybe I’d taught him something.

We drove the last block from Revere to Pinckney and I told him I could jump out on the left. He slowed and pulled the car to the curb and as he put it in park he said: “I am…five…five, five…”

“Fifty five?” I asked.

“Yes. Fifty five,” he said. “Married 30 years. No children.”

“Wow,” I said. “You’ve been married a long time. That’s amazing.”

“Married 30 years and no children. No good.” He shook his head once.

I didn’t say anything.

A couple seconds later he turned around and smiled. “You give me five stars?”

“Definitely,” I said.

I thanked him for the ride, got out and shut the door. He waved and put on his blinker before he pulled out slowly onto an empty Charles Street.

Just before I went to sleep I opened the app and scored Bedih with a five-star ride. Because it was.