Things I Don't Remember

I kept a diary for the five years I drove a taxi, because I was afraid I would forget some things. Turns out I was right - I did forget a lot.

I remember the truly vivid things, but the less vivid things....that's a different story.

I thought a line or two would jog my memory, but nope. Some memories are gone completely.I suspect if someone had taped these things and I saw them, the memories would pop right up. I've had that happen before.

Here are the thngs I have forgotten and now only exist as a line or two in my diary.

The woman who claimed she was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and who tried to kill her boyfriend by beating him in the head with a clock-radio.

A drunk woman who gave me $40 for a $10 ride to a nightclub so she could catch her boyfriend with another woman.

An old lady who said, "That's really radical" when I told her about a man who told me he was arrested over an unpaid $2 parking ticket and whose car was towed.

The small-town guy who picked up a woman at a bar and was dumped by her 100 miles away, with $20 in his pocket, because he said something she did not like.

The woman who said, "You have to admire a man who knows how to carry an umbrella" and who told me when her sick husband's insurance ran out the hospital deposited him on their front porch.

Got asked out by a 48-year-old ex-mental patient, and who wanted to know if I had a place of my own.

Hugged by a drunk.

Took a black teenager home for 55 cents. He said someone was trying to rob him and he just wanted to get out of there.

Picked up a woman who wanted to run off with me in my car. Said she hitchhiked Iceland and called me "dear."

An old woman pushing a toothless dog in a baby carriage.

The black hooker who said virgins have a different muscle tone.

A hooker who told me she made $245 for five minutes and "didn't have to make any noise."

The brain-damaged guy the ambulance wouldn't take to the hospital.

A hooker who told me some guy wanted his butt taped shut with duct tape.

Picked up a guy who told me he served five years for robbing a cab driver at gunpoint.

Picked up Santa Claus at a downtown apartment complex.

A young woman who was laid off at work and started crying in my taxi. She said "girls are so emotional and no guy would cry like that."

The woman undergoing electroshock for depression.

A beggar called me "cheap" because I wouldn't give him a quarter.

Picked up a man who had his vocal chords cut out.

Picked up a black guy who told me he'd been on his own since he was six and claimed 70% of women were man-pleasers and everyone had their price.

A Nigerian driver tried to sell me some foodstamps.

Picked up a guy who was a chopper pilot in Vietnam.

The sarcastic drunk/druggie girl who said in high school she wore thick glasses and hardly had any boyfriends.

The 75-year-old who had a penile prothesis and four girlfriends. Said women had to pay him to sleep with them.