The Conversationalist

      The storm has passed, but the damage remains.  It's Halloween and New York is attempting to function again.  South of 40th st is still without power, no signs of it returning.  The only thing on my mind is that I've been given instructions to make it to work if I can, and I can.  The worst thing that happened in my neighborhood was fallen trees, and to be honest the trees that fell actually left us with a beautiful view of central park, so I'm not complaining.  I rushed out of the house with my plate of Halloween cookies in one hand and my purse in the other.  I get to the corner and there is already one girl attempting to flag down any cab.  With the MTA down, cabs are picking up multiple parties and not asking many questions.  All the cabs that pass are full, so I ask her how long she had been standing there, she said about 15mins, so we talk about where we are going and she said if in a joint effort we could snag a cab she would be more than willing to share.  Another 5 mins, nothing, so we decided to head over to the nearest hotel and have them flag one down for us.  I leave her there, wish her goodluck and head to the next corner, I stand there for 5 more mins and finally a gypsy cab stops, I have cash, so I'm not worried.  I get in and tell him the address, as traffic slowly starts crawling, we pull out.  At the first stop light I offer him a cookie, he is very gracious.  And from there we start chatting...

     The cab ride took 2 hours, but by the time we pulled up to my office, I didn't want to get out, I could have chatted with this cab driver, whom I regretfully did not get his name, all day.  We talked about the storm and thankful we were that we were unaffected.  He told me how the day it hit he was supposed to visit a friend down in the area that got hit the hardest but as he was driving down Riverside, he noticed the water rising with no signs of stopping and decided it wasn't such a good idea.  He said he saw some crazies, probably tourists, out on the water taking pictures.  We laughed at how no picture would be worth our lives, but apparently those people thought it was.  Then we talked about where we were both from, me from California and him from West Africa, he said the name once, but I can't recall it.  He told me he had been in NY for 7 years, and when he was growing up he used to skip his English classes because he told his family "I will never need English, why would I need English."  We laughed about how sometimes God changes your plan drastically.  He told me how he was very good at Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics, but in order to pass you also had to be good at English.  So he said, I passed English, to pass my other classes. He also speaks French and a language native to his country.  He told me, how when he first came to New York, he thought that he would become a famous soccer (football) player.  That was his dream growing up and he just believed that was how he was going to make a lot of money.  But that he went and tried out and it wasn't anything that he expected, they ran drills instead of running actually competitions and he didn't think it was a good measure of his skill so he didn't continue on.  He shared with me how he had a dream after that of his mother telling him God will give you skills and will make you rich in this life, but it's not going to be with soccer. We talked about how hard it is to let go of a dream that you've held onto for so long, but how God's plans are always better than our own.  I told him how my brother was a goalie and how I thought he could go on to be a pro, but that's not what he wanted. And how  instead he was coaching while in school.  He told me how his brother went into schooling because of his example and how he excelled.  We talked about how he was in school, hoping to get his PhD and talking with school counselors about continuing school.  When we arrived at our destination I was sad to leave, it was one of the best encounters I have had in New York and one of the longest cab rides of my life, but I was so blessed by our conversation.  When I asked how much, he said "you don't owe me anything, it was just a pleasure talking with you, but if you want, you give me whatever you would normally pay a cabbie for this ride or not really it was just so nice to talk to you."  I already knew I was going to pay him more than the average  cabbie because I had enjoyed the conversation just as much.  I handed him the money and another cookie for the road, he gave me a big smile and said, "Have a great day and a blessed life."  Only in New York.