47. Positivity

Today, I will share the ride I had with a man I picked up from a dialysis clinic. He had just finished one of his three times a week treatments, which he told me took him from 7 AM to 2 PM each time.

As I pulled up, I noticed he had a wheelchair. My trunk cannot fit a wheelchair, but I thought I would see what we could do. I got out of the car and told him I could fit the wheelchair in the backseat, if he was OK sitting in the front seat. As he had already been waiting for a ride, and the previous two cars could also not fit his wheelchair, he said he was OK with that. 

That’s when I noticed that he only had one leg. He got into the front seat with no issue, and I folded up his wheelchair and put it in the backseat. We were then on our way, which just happened to be on the other side of town. As we started, he told me about his dialysis. 

He had told me he had been there since this morning, and that he always had to get these rides across town. They were training him at the clinic, though, how he could do ithe treatments himself so he could start  doing them at home and no matter re driving back and forth. This was going to take about a month.

As we drove on, he complimented the music. I was playing my easy listening mix, which is mostly easy songs from the 80s and 90s (think everything from Styx and Journey to Soul Asylum and Goo Goo Dolls). He said he was a big fan of 90s music (I’m guessing from looking at him he was ten years younger than me, so that sounded right). 

He asked if it would be OK if he took a nap and I said sure it’s a 30 minute ride. He said that a nice cool car, a comfortable seat, and great tunes were conducive to him falling asleep. After a full day of being attached to a dialysis machine, I had no doubt. 

But then, the next thing I know, he’s decided to ask me some questions. The first being, and kind of coming out of nowhere, is if I could live anywhere in the world, where would I live? I told him Bali. He was kind of shocked by that. He was not a world traveler, so he didn’t know anything about Bali, but he had travelled all across the United States. 

I asked him where he would like to end up, and he said “Montana.” He loved the mountains and the wide open space. Big country. He had gone hunting there years ago and fell in love with the place. That was where he wanted to end up.

I told him I liked the mountains as well, but was a little more partial to beaches as long as the water was warm, which it definitely was in Bali. I said if I had to pick somewhere in the US, it would be the Big Island of Hawaii because it combined mountains and beaches. He had been to Hawaii and said that was a good choice.

He asked me questions about Bali. What did I like about it? What was the food like? What were the people like? I told him I liked it because I felt it was a very relaxed atmosphere. The food was fantastic.  And the people were very friendly. He said that it sounded great. 

The next song that came up was the Sarah McLachlan song, “Possession.” He talked about how he loved her music and how it have gotten him through some bad times in the 90s. He stopped talking and listened to the song. 

Anytime a song came up he knew and liked he would punch me in the arm and laugh saying “Oh my God you have great taste in music!” He seemed really happy along the ride. He definitely radiated positivity and it was infecting me.

He asked me what my favorite three foods were. I told him that was a hard one, because I like a variety of foods, but I was a meat and potatoes guy first and foremost. He hit me on the arm again, and laughed, saying that a t-bone steak with a baked potato was on top of his list. I said almost any steak will do it for me, medium rare, and a loaded baked potato. His second favorite was barbecue, but it had to be Texas barbecue, as he was from Lubbock. I told him mine was Indonesian fried rice. It was different than most generic fried rices and I was always sentimental for it. My mom always made the best. For his third choice, he told me it was probably a salad, but that was only because he thought he should have vegetables in there somewhere. I laughed an I told him vegetables aren’t always necessary, but I could eat a salad… Maybe a steak salad! He laughed.

He then asked me if I had played football in high school. I replied that I had, but I wasn’t really any good. I asked him if he had played and what position. He was a lineman who played Ironman football, playing both offense and defense. He said he had about 150 pounds more than on him than he had now. He seemed to drift away as he thought about those days. 

He was wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey and pointed it out to me, saying how much he loved football and wished he could still play even on a touch football level. And he was a Cowboys fan through and through. I told him I was really sorry, as I was born outside of Philadelphia and that made me an Eagles fan. He laughed and said “Oh, that would make us enemies!” I told him that was too bad because I really liked him. He laughed back and hit me in the area and said “Yeah, maybe we can just have a friendly rivalry.”

As we approached his apartment complex, he told me I was the best Uber driver he had had in five years, and if I wanted to ever hang out, he would love that. He gave me his number. I told him that would be great and if he ever needed a ride to see if the drive share would allow him to select a driver, to have them contact me. He told me he got his rides through a health service agency, and so I told him to let them know.

We pulled in, and I took his wheelchair out of the back seat.  He jumped into it, and then extended  his hand. I took it as shook hands, and he  said, “Thank you very much. That ride was the highlight of my week.” We then did a fist bump and then he was on his way.

Considering all the hardships he was going through at the time, with the dialysis treatment and his leg,  it was really nice to see that he was in good spirits about life. It made me think about my own life, and think that I should be more positive. He was very inspirational indeed.