Cab Ride

The FACTCHECK: The Cabin Trip

Twenty years ago there was a period in my live when I drove a taxi to live. There was a cowboy lifestyle, a player lifestyle, a lifestyle for someone who didn't want a chief, continuous motion and the excitement of a die throw every single turn a new passanger entered the cabin.

None of these lifetimes affected me more than that of a lady I took up later in a hot August evening. There were too many poor opportunities awaiting a rider who went up to a shaded house at half past three in the morning. What a shame! Except when a circumstance smell of hazard, I always went to the front to try to find the occupant.

Wouldn't I want a chauffeur to do the same if my dad or my mom had sent for a taxi? And so I went to the front gate and I knocked. A long break and the doors opened. There was a little girl, somewhere in the '80s, standing in front of me. "I want to be alone for a moment.

" Then I took the case to the taxi and went back to help the wife. I am on my way to a hospice". They opened the doors without even a moment's hesitation and began to help the wife. Then I opened the boot and brought the little case to the front doors. She was already in a chair.

"You' ve given an old lady a little bit of joy," she said. I could tell behind me the doors were closed. That was the tone of the end of a lifetime. How about this lady getting a rider who would have been furious or insulting or eager to finish his shifts?

If I had been in a bad temper and refuse to talk to the wife, what would happen? And how many other times like this had I forgotten or not understood? We' re conditioning to think that our life revolves around great times. However, great times often hit us unexpectedly.

It was possible to believe when this lady embraced me and said that I had given her a joyful instant that I had been taken to heaven just to give her the last ride. And I don't think I've done anything more important in my lifetime.

Since 1999, this play about a taxi cabbie driving an older lady into a Hospiz has been printed in a series of booklets and widely distributed on the web, usually without crediting and under various headings such as "The Cab Ride", "The Cab Driver" and "The Taxi Driver".

Recently a UK website published the now widely travelled history of my taxi ride experiences when I was picking up an old lady on her way to a hospital. I' m excited when my usual lifetime provides an exceptional occasion that gives comfort, insights or joy to others, and that was the happiness of that occasion in the later 1980s when I was riding the "dog layer" in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Remarkable about this instant, beyond its sharpness, is that I did not make it; I only lived it and let it develop. It gives us all these times - I call them "Blue Moments" - in which a radiant glow is shining through the usual times of our usual time.