I ALMOST GOT INTO CORNELL AT AGE 58! With his two kids and wife in the back seat I asked the guy sitting next to me what he did for a living. He's a part-time engineering professor at Cornell University. I told him that I visited there with my daughter and she was upset when she wasn't accepted four years ago. When I told him I wrote a poem entitled "Cornell Who" to cheer my daughter up, he said he'd love to have a copy and he would put it on a bulletin board for his students. He said he really wasn't a good fit at Cornell, but he graduated. He said it wasn't for everyone. I made him a deal. I encouraged him to take his family that day to see the movie "Yesterday" since he had all afternoon before his flight home. If he texted me what he thought of the movie and his e-mail address, I would send him my poem for his classroom. So far, I'm still waiting. I came so close to getting into Cornell!
GOING TO BERLIN? When I picked up the two women on a Sunday afternoon I knew they had already had too much to drink. They wanted to go to the nearest convenience store, but when I went to start the ride my app said, "Berlin, 93 hours." The women said, "we're not going to Berlin," which of course was true. My app said that the "route was not available." They had to cancel the ride and start over but they had difficulty with that. When I took them to the store two miles away, I found out they had ordered a second ride and he was waiting for them back at the place I picked them up. They couldn't cancel that ride, because their phone was dying. They got their beer and got back safely and probably slept well that night. I just missed out on a really long ride.
THE RAPPER: It was a short ride, but very entertaining. The name I had was Evelyn and this guy definitely wasn't Evelyn. His girlfriend set up the ride. He said he was a rapper and I told him my wife loved rap music. I also said I had written 300 songs mostly to popular music. He said what I did was "jackin' for beats", a phrase I was not familiar with. I said to him, "do you perform somewhere or do you just rap for friends? He fell asleep on me. I thought we were "rapping" pretty well. (sorry I could not resist)
THE RUSSIAN: She was a very friendly and pleasant woman who worked for The World Bank and had a degree in Engineering and Economics. When she got in the car I asked her where she was from and she took out her phone and showed me the back of it which had a big picture of Putin. I thought that was funny. She had a great deal from a new Hilton Hotel here, but when they told her it was a big room, she asked for a smaller room since she's just one person. They told her she would have to pay $50 more a night for a smaller room and she did! I think she was ripped off, but she was very enthusiastic about her vacation in Myrtle Beach.
DRIVING AND DRINKING CAN BE EXPENSIVE: The 27 year-old woman was going to a driving class on Saturday morning that she had to take. She told me that she made a big mistake. She had never been in any trouble in her life, but she had too much to drink and tried to return her friend's car. She got pulled over for a DWI and with lawyer's fees and insurance, it's going to cost her about $6,000. I frequently drive people on Saturday or Sunday morning to pick-up their car that they leave at a bar or restaurant the night before. I now tell them that they may have saved themselves $6,000. I told the rapper, but I don't know if he was awake when I said it.
GETTING A SIGN IN CHURCH? My passenger had just left a Sunday church service and driving only a couple blocks he went over a manhole cover that was sticking up from the ground. He got a whole in the tire and I was taking him home. I said to him that I hoped he wasn't asking God for a sign and he told me that he was praying for a friend of his who texted him in the church that she had failed her nursing exam. I spent the last five minutes of the ride telling him uplifting stories about John F. Kennedy Jr, Walt Disney, Abraham Lincoln, etc. When he got out of the car I said, "I know this wasn't as good as church, but hopefully what I said helped." He said, "thanks it was inspiring." Maybe the flat tire was a sign?
THE CROATIAN GIRLS: They are working here in Myrtle Beach as part of a program that gives young people from other countries to areas that need seasonal workers. After the program ends next month they have planned a 25 day trip to eleven cities in the U.S. including Miami, New York, Washington, and San Francisco. I asked them if they had extra room and then I paused so they would think I was asking if I could go and then said, "my wife would love to go with you." They laughed, but my wife isn't going with them.
MISS MANNERS: I had a long ride with an older woman who lived most of her life in Chicago. She's been able to meet a number of famous people and she says she always treats them like a "regular person." She told me what we need today is manners, "all you need is manners." I told her it would make a great song and she laughed. She told me that she loves seafood, especially craw fish. She asked me if I liked hot food and I said I did, not realizing she meant spicy food. When I cleared that up she warned me, "stay away from the craw fish."
THE LAUGHING GIRLS: At 9:30 am on a Sunday morning I did not expect to hear two young women in their mid to late twenties, laughing on and off for thirty minutes. One of them had a flight in an hour and did not seem concerned at all. At the beginning of the ride I said to her, "Did you enjoy your time here?" She replied, "it didn't suck. We had a blast." I started laughing immediately by the way she phrased things. The clincher was when we passed the Wax Museum that has a large King Kong holding on to the Empire State Building, she said, "shit, look at that ass." The laughter of the two women showing each other pictures of themselves clowning around on the trip, kept me laughing all the way to the airport.
THE NEW JERSEY, GREEN BAY PACKER FAN": There are plenty of fans of the football Green Bay Packers and I'm sure a fair number in New Jersey. However, how many of them have season tickets for the Packer's home games? His family was buying tickets from a woman in Wisconsin for years and made a deal with her to transfer the tickets into her "nephew's name", my rider. The bogus arrangement enables him to go to 3-4 games a year. They pay for four seats to seven games at a cost of $150 per ticket or $4,200 per game. Of course, he has to travel to Wisconsin to see the game too.
THE FOREIGN STUDENTS: The three girls got in my car and I knew they were part of the program we have here for them to work in the summer. I asked where they were from and they wanted me to guess. I wasn't going to fall for that, since some people are insulted if you think they are from another country. I told them to pick three countries and then I'll guess. They picked China, Korea, and Japan and I guessed Korea. They said I was right, but a minute later they were laughing because they were from China. They taught me how to say goodbye in Chinese, pronounced "Zi-chen." One of them had taken some French classes and I taught her how to say, "je ne sais pas, " which means, "I do not know." I never thought I'd teach French to the Chinese.
RIDERS SAY HELLO TO MY MOTHER-IN -LAW: We were driving right past where my mother-in-law is staying and the husband said to me, "send all our love to her." I then had them wave as we drove past her building.
THE ALBANIAN STUDENT: I don't recall ever seeing a first name that starts with the letters XH and she explained to me that it is pronounced in her country like a "J." Why not just use "J"?
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