A GIFT FROM CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
They came a long way to give me this gift and I'm glad they did. From Cape Town, to New York it's a sixteen to seventeen hour plane ride. The man and woman were in commercial real estate. They've traveled to the USA many times and have been in eighteen states on business. They always spend some time seeing the sites of the state they are in and they were enjoying their visit to Charleston, South Carolina. I loved their accents and they were a great way to end my day driving. As we got out of the car, he said they wanted a picture of me in my car. I held up the above bill with Nelson Mandela that they gave me and I'm waiting for them to send me a copy of the picture. The best gift they gave me was...themselves.
A GOAL SETTER EXTRAORDINAIRRE
My ride with the woman who lives in Charleston, South Carolina was terrific immediately. She was delightful and had a wonderful laugh that I heard for most of the ride. After graduating with a journalism degree in communications, she found out pretty quickly that the money was not what she wanted to make. She switched over to the telecommunications industry and had a very successful career in it. Her main goal her whole career was to retire early and start the career she really wanted-to be an artist.
Retiring in her early fifties, she spent three years training to be a painter and she succeeded. She told me, "An encore career is the best career, because it's the one you really want." She's a quick painter and keeps two galleries stocked with paintings and she also travels around the country doing art exhibits. She's just a regular person with extraordinary determination, skill, and a very fun personality.
I didn't want to drop her off at the airport when she told me about one of her oldest friends. Her story is inspiration for everyone and her friend's story is just absolutely amazing. Her friend was a successful dentist for 37 years and decided she wanted to be a lawyer. After getting her law degree, this woman who is five feet tall and maybe 95 pounds, takes clients who have been wronged by dentists. When she puts a dentist on the stand, she becomes her own expert witness and dentists can't defend themselves. In her spare time her friend hunts alligators, skins them, and has a house full alligator-made things. My rider showed me a picture of the two of them and another friend in front of a twelve foot alligator on her wall. My rider said of her friend, "She is not someone to play with."
I joked with her that I was disappointed she was in my car instead of her friend, and got a huge laugh out of her. In five years I've had about 60-70 truly great rides and this was one of them.
AN AMERICAN COMES HOME FOR THE FIRST TIME
I could not pass up writing this story of the young man I met in Charleston. He's a cadet at Citadel College in his first few months of school. I asked him where he came from and he said, "Germany, but I spent some time also in Belgium." His dad is in the Navy and he decided to go into the Army because he feels it would give him more opportunities as a doctor. He's an American and these few months are his first months in The United States. When I asked him what was the biggest difference between Germany and The United States he said, "The people here are much friendlier." He's still getting adjusted to being in a military school and also finally being in this country. He said, "I still feel like a foreigner." As he got out of the car, I gave him a little gift, (my list of comments) and I said, "Welcome home."
PAM'S WORLD
In almost every ride I give, the passenger enters my world, the world of "The Sunshine Man." This ride was one of the rare exceptions and I was the one entering "Pam's World." Visiting form Western New Jersey, only twenty minutes from where I used to live, this woman was an absolute joy to be driving. Full of enthusiasm, energy, and positivity, I wanted to just sit back and talk to her, but driving was just getting in the way. Professionally, she is a project manager for women's cosmetics and described what she does as, "We're the beauty behind the beauty."
She gave me a lecture on having a positive attitude. She started by saying, "I don't know why people are not joyful in the morning, the afternoon, or the night or every time. Everything isn't sunshine and rainbows, but you have to fully embrace things that happen 100% and be yourself. You have to navigate the bad and get through it by having peripheral vision."
I asked her where she got her positivity from and she said, "I was born with it; the doctor said I was a happy baby." When she was younger her friends wrote a song about what it's like being in "Pam's World." She can't remember any of the words, but after driving her, I could probably come up with some lyrics. The people who are in Pam's world today are very lucky to be there.
MY PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE
She walked up to my car with her three children between the ages of about 11 and 19. Looking in my car she immediately spotted my mannequin, Lilly, and said to me with a smile, "Are you a weirdo?" I said to her with a bigger smile, "Do I look like a weirdo?" Obviously a fun person to be around, the former psychology major started putting together her psychological profile on me. She has five children and working in the X-ray she enjoys meeting people. We had a lot of fun going back and forth.
When I brought up the 38 bills hanging in my car, she said, "We're not going to do history, are we?" I didn't go through all my bills, but she did like it when I took out a small bag of extra bills and let her son pick one out to take home. Her funniest line at that point was, "So you give a little bag to small children?" By the end of the ride I won the New Yorker over, but in her own way. She wanted to know if she could call me for their next ride, because, "You would be less creepy than the next person and I'll let you talk some more."
POSTIVIVELY HAWAIIAN
I have always heard that Hawaiians are friendly and my passenger gave me a lot more than that. Born in Hawaii, she is now living in South Carolina. She recently recovered for a car accident where she was hit by a police car and her car wound up in a ditch. After being out of work for a couple months she is as positive as she's ever been. She told me, "I believe you get more out of life with positivity." Each morning between 6-6:30 am she takes a picture of herself with a mug and posts it on social media. She is now called, "Mug girl." Most people with long names want to shorten their name, but when she gets married she's going to take her middle name, Kaleo'okalani, and switch it with her first name which is shorter. In the future she'll be known as Kaleo, however, I think she'll always be known as positive.
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