Contributor: Francis Harrison
- -
If you’ve ever taken Chicago Public Transportation, or any public transportation for that matter, you must know that there are some real characters. People with peculiar colored hair and people that are so interesting they carry conversations with themselves seem to be littered throughout public transportation systems. Now I have nothing against these people and actually enjoy their company; they add something different to life. On the El to the appoet holiday party, I should have noticed the foreshadowing that a blue and green haired elderly woman would give.
The party itself wasn’t so strange. Good friends and colleagues meeting for the first time without a computer screen as a barrier was an uplifting experience. It really made all the team that works so hard to make appoet what it is, realize that we aren’t just doing it for our followers and ourselves, but for each other. Drinks were emptied and stories shared until it came time for myself, TJ Vanek, another staff writer, and a friend of ours to head home to the suburbs.
The El at this time was barren and we shared the entire car with two other individuals who obviously had partaken in certain activities like ourselves. After waiting a short time for the red line traveling north, we got off to transfer lines. Waiting more than twenty minutes is incredibly uncommon and I soon come to the sobering thought that all the trains had stopped running. We were stranded.
We called relatives and called friends but no one answered us at 2 a.m. and we quickly realized we needed a cab. But as the destination was still about a forty minute car journey and we’re all broke college students, it proved an issue. We talked and pleaded with three or four cab drivers to make the trek. Each driver in the taxi rank was to charge us an insane amount or simple denied us any service. That is all the drivers except the last car.
He wore a tattered hat and was scarfing down a subway sandwich that made the three of us drool. He told us he didn’t want to but after some persistent badgering, he relented. Not only did he offer us a much cheaper ride than his counterparts, but offered us one of the best taxi journey’s I’ve had the pleasure of taking. I took my seat in the front and shook the man’s hand. It pains me to see so many people just hop in the back and pretend like the cab driver is robotic, incapable of human interaction.
His name was Moses and he asked us what we were doing in Chicago. We explained a bit about appoet and he promised to check it out; so I started asking him questions. I asked him about his life, his marriage and his two children. He was more than happy to talk and tell us how he and his wife met and even shed some of his elderly wisdom on love to a drunken college student talking about how he wanted to text his ex. It was really quite wonderful.
The ride was filled with laughter, jokes and even banter as the three of us felt we had known Moses for years; that he wasn’t just a cab driver but a friend, a colleague. If Moses hasn’t been there to drive us back to the suburbs, we still would be walking back right now. I don’t know whether I enjoyed that ride because I was in high spirits after spirits, whether I was relieved to be going home, or if it was the fact that Moses reminded me that there are good people out there. He saw a group of individuals in need and made it his goal to fix that need. The world needs more people like Moses. I can only hope the three of us entertained him enough so that he was glad he drove us. I think we did.
- - -
Read more »
- -
If you’ve ever taken Chicago Public Transportation, or any public transportation for that matter, you must know that there are some real characters. People with peculiar colored hair and people that are so interesting they carry conversations with themselves seem to be littered throughout public transportation systems. Now I have nothing against these people and actually enjoy their company; they add something different to life. On the El to the appoet holiday party, I should have noticed the foreshadowing that a blue and green haired elderly woman would give.
The party itself wasn’t so strange. Good friends and colleagues meeting for the first time without a computer screen as a barrier was an uplifting experience. It really made all the team that works so hard to make appoet what it is, realize that we aren’t just doing it for our followers and ourselves, but for each other. Drinks were emptied and stories shared until it came time for myself, TJ Vanek, another staff writer, and a friend of ours to head home to the suburbs.
The El at this time was barren and we shared the entire car with two other individuals who obviously had partaken in certain activities like ourselves. After waiting a short time for the red line traveling north, we got off to transfer lines. Waiting more than twenty minutes is incredibly uncommon and I soon come to the sobering thought that all the trains had stopped running. We were stranded.
We called relatives and called friends but no one answered us at 2 a.m. and we quickly realized we needed a cab. But as the destination was still about a forty minute car journey and we’re all broke college students, it proved an issue. We talked and pleaded with three or four cab drivers to make the trek. Each driver in the taxi rank was to charge us an insane amount or simple denied us any service. That is all the drivers except the last car.
He wore a tattered hat and was scarfing down a subway sandwich that made the three of us drool. He told us he didn’t want to but after some persistent badgering, he relented. Not only did he offer us a much cheaper ride than his counterparts, but offered us one of the best taxi journey’s I’ve had the pleasure of taking. I took my seat in the front and shook the man’s hand. It pains me to see so many people just hop in the back and pretend like the cab driver is robotic, incapable of human interaction.
His name was Moses and he asked us what we were doing in Chicago. We explained a bit about appoet and he promised to check it out; so I started asking him questions. I asked him about his life, his marriage and his two children. He was more than happy to talk and tell us how he and his wife met and even shed some of his elderly wisdom on love to a drunken college student talking about how he wanted to text his ex. It was really quite wonderful.
The ride was filled with laughter, jokes and even banter as the three of us felt we had known Moses for years; that he wasn’t just a cab driver but a friend, a colleague. If Moses hasn’t been there to drive us back to the suburbs, we still would be walking back right now. I don’t know whether I enjoyed that ride because I was in high spirits after spirits, whether I was relieved to be going home, or if it was the fact that Moses reminded me that there are good people out there. He saw a group of individuals in need and made it his goal to fix that need. The world needs more people like Moses. I can only hope the three of us entertained him enough so that he was glad he drove us. I think we did.
- - -
0 Comments
Author:
Francis Harrison
