31. Abandoned Passengers

It has been a quiet night. Not many people were talking. But a late night pick-up made me think of a phenomenon I have encountered on a number of occasions.

 

Oftentimes I see a name come up for a ride and when I go to pick them up, it is not that person. Sometimes, parents get rides for their kids, but what I’m talking about is two adults in this situation.

 

Today, I went to pick up a passenger, let’s call him “Erik“, and when the passenger came to the car, she was definitely not an “Erik”. She was a waif, thin and sullen and dressed in an oversized army coat and ripped jeans. She approached the car and I rolled down the window and I said “Erik“? She nodded her head. I opened the door for her. She was carrying a duffel bag and a trash bag stuffed to capacity. She got into the car and said nothing.

 

I don’t make it a habit to ask my passengers personal questions. If they volunteer information, I am willing to listen to them and interact with them when they ask me questions. So, I did not ask this young lady what was going on. I asked her how she was doing, and she said “Ok” and that was the extent of our verbal exchange. She looked very sad and lay down in the backseat.

 

I took her to the location set in my app, which was in a sketchier part of town. She got out, and I waited to make sure someone greeted her at the door. Someone did and so I drove away. I wondered what had happened. Did she have a fight with “Erik”? Was he her boyfriend? Or father? Brother? Someone else?

 

This has happened to me a lot during my travels. A few weeks ago, I remember making a stop for a woman we will call “Rachel”. When the passenger got to the car, I could see he clearly was not a “Rachel”. He didn’t have the proper haircut. He was carrying two trash bags in the backpack. He got into the car, and I could see he was very angry.

 

I decided to make a joke of it and said “Hello Rachel…“

 

He replied “Rachel is my bitch of a sister…“

 

He then went on to tell me exactly how much of a bitch his sister was. How she was kicking him out of her house because he still had not found a job and how she could think he would find one so fast, it had only been six months. And she knows he can’t help pay for things like groceries and cable and his cell phone because he was going through a hard time so why is she giving him so much shit! And how dare she tell him to do things around the house like clean or do laundry! She was not the boss of him! He was the big brother!

 

The ride took about 20 minutes and he spent the whole time complaining about his sister. He told me that he was going to sleep on a friend’s couch. I wondered how long that friend would put up with his shit.

 

The other night I went to pick up a ride for someone we will call “Annika“. When the passenger arrived at my door, “Annika” was an old Latino man, complete with cowboy hat and mustache. He did not speak English. I got a text on my app from “Annika” saying this was her father and he didn’t speak much English. Just drop him off. By “didn’t speak much”, she meant none.

 

I drove him to another part of town about twenty minutes away and ended up dropping him off in front of a restaurant. I don’t know if he had a ride from there or meeting someone there as it was 11PM and the restaurant looked closed. I didn’t know what to say to him, either, as neither of us could communicate with each other. But the fact that his daughter got him a ride to a closed restaurant seemed very sad to me.

 

I have noticed this situation often: picking up women who have a man’s name listed as the passenger, or vice versa. When it happens the passengers mostly look very depressed. And, for the most part, they don’t want to talk, I’m guessing especially not to a stranger. So, I don’t hear their story.

 

I wonder if they are parents kicking out their children or children abandoning parents; siblings who have had enough of each other; or partners needing space or maybe just ending it all together. What happened to the relationship that lead to someone paying for a ride to get rid of someone else.

 

Whatever the case, they all seem to be sad stories and I am just there to drive two people away from each other… and how I can do nothing to ease their pain.