starting with cabs

Lately, my days have begun in dusty cabs wearing starched outfits with a backpack lazily slung over my groggy shoulders. The crispness of my attire belies the sappy mood you would feel too if you just woke up and forced to smell the smog. Well, not really instantly. Its starts with the hint of freshness that now seems to be a rare and distinct character of the UP Village, but the goodness fades almost instantly as one takes steps toward the kanto just behind the NHA where I take my cab. Reminds me of two-day-old lettuce. You know? Where it looks crisp but it limps into your sandwich the moment you touch it? That’s how the morning feels.

And I have to grin. Because a cab just halts by just as I wave it down. And at just that instant, in what I can only describe in legal terms as “estoppel,” I regret it already. The cab, a Nissan sentra of squarish make looks solid enough except for the series of black skid-like marks on the doors!!!! The kind that looks like “!!!!” leaning over to cheat on its neighbor. And the dent! Man, the bumper’s dent on the passenger side not even slightly. With stitch marks from some thick nylon. Frankencab, I think. I’ll tell you why it worries me but I’m sure you’ve already guessed what I feel about the cabby.

But I got to ride and I got to go. So I grin. Here goes. “Makati po. EDSA daan” Just hope the cab driver’s nice to let me sleep.

Aaaaand nope, he doesn’t. fuck it. I noticed this about cab drivers. But let me just deal with this one. They twitch around in their seats and twist an arm to look at their watch preparing to say, and if you’ve been in the metro long enough you know they’re going to say this, “boss, traffic dun,” in an attempt to dislodge you to pick another passenger. But today, I was lettuce, two days old, and I didn’t want to whither any further. I would have none of the excuses.

But he starts out nonchalantly, peppered lightly with descriptive words about someone’s mother, about how Makati sucks and how someone, he says someone, catches him and fines him for dropping off passengers just about anywhere. He pretends we’re buddies and takes the tone like “alam mo naman yun brod di ba?” Of course, I was no brod…

Now, tired old me, suspicious that this is either a con job to make me either pity the fool and give him a higher tip or he just realized he didn’t want to go the EDSA way for some fear of traffic, I just about said good bye to my morning nap to work and snapped back, “ba’t ka naman kasi nagbababa sa bawal…?”

“eh kasi…” so he rolls on some excuse about the sign not being in the right place and what not. I reassured him where I was going there was no such trap and tried to ignore him the rest of the way. I was tired of hearing this everyday and today I just tuned out. And he keeps on and on and on.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are decent cab drivers and I will write about them sometime. But today, he wasn’t on of them. Incessant chatter and a ridiculously heavy brake foot just got me this close to puking had I not been too tired for my gut muscles to tighten.

My point is this, to many the cab serves the very first social interaction one gets into his everyday metro life. He couldn’t do without it. And if only cabs can be less of a box of chocolates enough to send some sign of what the drive to work would be like, then stepping into the office would be one fine feeling. But noooooo, you get con men, you get old political ones, the occasional nice ones, the former stock broker turned cab driver, the smelly ones (eowww), the brakers, the swervers, the speeders, and very very often the ones who do not know the rules. All affect that precious hour drive from QC to Makati where they are free to disturb your peaceful catch-up nap by the talk or the fear of hitting something on the road.

Ahhh, if only. Work would be far far more pleasant.