The only time of year that I become wary of asking people how they’re doing is between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.
‘Tis the season of some people having a hard time during the holidays.
I get it, I really do, that the holidays can be tough for people. Not everyone has a family they get along with or a family at all, and every year I get at least a handful of people just straight up going through it when they get into my taxi. They unload, seldom taking it out on me but making the air heavy in the taxi all the same. Stories of their father’s suicide on Christmas Eve, their mother’s fatal drunken car crash, catching their ex-husbands fucking their secretaries and their kids’ heroin overdoses abound far more around the holidays than I would have thought when I first started driving a taxi.
Now I’m always careful when I ask how someone’s night is going during this time of year, because whatever filter people usually have that keeps them from telling a total stranger their horribly painful life story seems to get thrown out the window during the holidays.
The one I always remember is the first heavy holiday ride that I ever gave someone, a woman I picked up on my first Thanksgiving whose husband had just beat the shit out of her. She had a bloody lip and a black eye and there was nothing I could do for her except take her to the BART and not charge her. She pleaded with me to take her money, but I refused and she tearfully said thank you as she got out of my cab and walked to the escalator.
I remember realizing that there was nothing I could do to change her situation.
Nothing I could do but listen.
And by listening to these horrible tales of abuse and death and pain every year around this time, perhaps the people telling them feel a little better. I let them unload because I don’t mind, and because maybe they don’t have any one else to talk to.
It makes me realize how lucky I am to have parents and siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends who love me. How lucky I am to not have bitter ex-wives and kids that can’t stand me.
How grateful I am that I no longer drink.
The most compelling confessions I hear also tend to come during this time of year. It’s as if the weight of the holidays forces people to get their horrible transgressions against their fellow man off of their chests to me, their cab driver, a total stranger.
They tell me all the horrible things that they’ve done, perhaps in an attempt to rid themselves of their guilt for having done them.
And I just listen and drive, usually while cranking the heat because it’s cold outside.
Come January, the resolutions begin; people don’t want to focus on their pasts in the wake of a new year. They want to look forward.
But for now, the confessional is open.
Get in and tell me your story.
