So, sometimes when I miss home, I trek out to Target, the one in Queens, so I can feel a little bit of home. I did this a while back and I took a taxi home. Now these aren't your typical taxis. These are more of your self run taxis, but you pay before you even get in, so they don't worry me the same way a gypsy cab does. So I got in, and I wasn't going to talk to the guy, he was a younger guy and it was pretty intent on just driving. But the silence got to me. I'm usually content to sitback and wait things out in social settings, but when its just me and one other person and it's completely silent, it freaks me out a bit. So I started chatting with him. "So how long have you been driving?" "Oh.. ummm... A little over a year." "Oh, cool." "Yeah, I really came here for school." "Nice, where do you go?" "Columbia." I was shocked, but I tried to play it cool. "That's wonderful." "Yeah, so I just do this as a way to pay the rent." "I hear ya." He then confirmed my address and said he lived a couple blocks away. So interesting to me. So we continued to talk and he told me that he was writing the thesis for his master program and applying to get a fellowship for his PhD at Columbia. He continued to explain how he was studying Psychology. I told him that's what my brother was studying and he asked what his focus was, I said Family and he said that's what he had started out wanting to study, but then became fascinated by sexual studies and psychology. I said I thought that would be fascinating. He said, "Yea, it really is, ya know most people hear that and think I'm some sort of pervert or something and that's not it at all why I wanted to study it." I affirmed him and said that I'm sure it was very interesting to learn about. He went on to tell me all about his thesis and how the leading thinkers in that field were at Columbia and that's why he was trying so hard to get in. I told him what I had studied and then we talked about family. I told him I was from CA, but had family in FL too. He said he was from FL. We continued talking more and more, he told me how his family owned two clubs down there and how I had to make it a point to go down there. We talked about the upcoming holiday, Thanksgiving. I told him a friend was visiting and he told me that he had saved the money he would've spent on a plane ticket to spend on a TV that he was getting on Black Friday. We laughed about how that might be the better investment. He said he also had a lot to get done for his thesis so it was smarter for him to stay in the city.
After he dropped me off, I just thought about how this city is so diverse. How your cab driver could be a scholar and you wouldn't even know it, because you didn't bother talking to them. It's incredible to me everyone's life path and how you can learn about it, just by asking a simple question that opens the door.
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