A very wise man, for whom I hold a great amount of respect, once told me, “only nice people go to heaven”. And at the time, I agreed with him entirely. And for the most part I still do, but I am starting to wonder if such is truly the case. Why? Because sometimes “nice” people can be “too nice” and let other people really annoy them, to the point where they consider doing not so “nice” things. I suppose it would be best to illustrate my point with a nice little story.
While engaged in my normal weekend cabbage, I got a call to go pick up a girl at Club Static. If none of you have ever been there, I understand completely. I haven’t either. Well, I did deliver pizza there several times and have picked up/dropped people off there, but that’s about the extent of it. But the people generally seem to be pretty nice, plus they tip okay, so I was glad to go.
When I got there, a girl jumped in the cab. Apparently she had been kicked out of the club because she was drunk but was only 19 years old. This, of course, was what she was recounting to me as we were backing out of the parking lot.
“I can’t believe they would just kick me out! I don’t look drunk to you, do I?” she asked. As I have stated before, I am painfully non-observant, but even I could tell she was a bit past “tipsy”.
“Well, I can tell that you have been drinking, (which was the truth) but I have met a lot of people a lot drunker than you. (which was also the truth)” I replied. Playing the diplomat is usually the best choice. But come on – I’m a cab driver! I deal with drunk people all the time! She seemed relatively appeased, thinking that I was on her side in the whole ordeal.
Now I will be completely honest. I didn’t like this girl very much. Actually, that’s kind of an understatement. For whatever reason, this girl was actually more annoying than anything. Perhaps it was because she asked my name 5 times in one mile and still couldn’t remember it. Or perhaps it was because during that same mile she kept going through the same story “I can’t believe they kicked me out! I don’t look drunk to you, do I? Why would they kick me out! I just can’t believe it!”
“Yes yes, you got kicked out of a club for being drunk. Cry me a river.” I kept thinking to myself. It’s one thing to complain about it once and then ponder it, but it’s quite another to literally keep repeating the same questions over and over and over and keep forgetting that you’ve already asked me. You want my opinion? I think they just kicked her out because she was so annoying.
Anyway, so the story continues. After that first mile, I offered to turn on the radio (mostly to just get her to forget about it and think about something else). That seemed to work, at least for the next mile, but then we had to start changing radio stations and that was equally annoying. So, I finally just turned it off.
“I mean, like, I can’t believe they just kicked me out of the club! Why would they do that! I’m like, barely drunk. I could drive right now! Why would they kick me out!”
It was not even physically possible for me to get this girl home soon enough. I’m usually a nice person, and I kept up that face, but this girl was driving me crazy. Finally we got her home. She paid for her cab and went up to her apartment door. I should have pulled out and left, but for whatever reason I didn’t. I was writing down my numbers for this particular trip. Before I got to pull out, she came running back down and jumped in the cab.
“I can’t believe it. I forgot my purse at my friend’s house and it has my keys in it and my roommate is not home. Uhh… can I just ride along with you for a while? ”
Oh no. No way girlfriend. You are not staying in this cab if I can help it. “Would you like to try calling your roommate with my cell phone? Maybe she can help you out.” I asked, trying everything possible to get rid of her.
“Yeah, maybe that will work.” she replied. So, I asked her what her roommate’s number was, and she said she wasn’t sure, but she ratted off a number, so I dialed it and handed her the phone. It didn’t work. We tried another. It still didn’t work.
As much as I wanted to ditch this girl, I knew that I couldn’t live with myself if she froze to death out there. I hate being a nice person sometimes. She had a skirt and a sleeveless shirt on. She wouldn’t make it past an hour. So, reluctantly, I offered to let her ride along with me.
“Thank you! I promise this won’t take long… Hey, now we can have fun together!” she exclaimed. I think I may have rolled my eyes a few times, but I doubt she noticed. And with that, we went on to go pick up another fare.
We arrived at Match Ups, a relatively non-eventful bar where people generally play cards and shoot pool. When we got there, I decided to go in and find the person I was supposed to pick up, and she went in to use the restroom. While she was doing that, I found my fare and we went out to the car.
It took every ounce of moral strength I had to not just ditch this girl and leave her there. That “nice” part of me was quickly being drowned out by my desire to just get her out of my hair. She still hadn’t stopped complaining about getting kicked out of the bar, nor did she have any clue as to why that happened.
I explained to the man I was taking home that this girl was going to be riding along with me because she was locked out of her apartment and I didn’t want her to freeze to death. He was fine with it and didn’t seem to be very annoyed by her when she came back out.
As we were pulling out, she proceeded to recount to him her story of being kicked out of the club. I know she said “Club Static” but for some reason the man thought she had said “The Hunt Club”. Maybe he was looking at some part of her physique at the time, or maybe he just genuinely misinterpreted her. For those of you who may not know, The Hunt Club is
“Don’t you have to be 21 to get into that place?” the man asked. She didn’t really listen to him but instead kept on complaining about getting kicked out. I knew this must have been one jumbled miscommunication. I can only imagine what the guy was thinking: here’s this cab driver with a 19 year old girl wearing practically nothing on a freezing night that he picked up at a strip club. I’ll let you draw the conclusions.
Rather than try to sort the entire situation out, I decided to just laugh at the irony of it all and get the guy home as quickly as possible. After we finally dropped him off and he smiled brightly at the girl and wished her a good night, we left and she said I could drop her off at her house.
“My roommate should be home soon.” She said. So, with that, I decided enough time had transpired and it should be okay. So I took her home. When we got there, she jumped out and I drove off immediately and didn’t dare look back.
And this, my friends, is the story that brings into question whether nice people really go to heaven. Theoretically I would think that they do, but then again “nice” people put up with a lot of annoying people. Who knows? Maybe one day that nice person will snap and do something irrational, like post a truthful blog about the annoying people they deal with.
1 comment:
Oh, I think you went above and beyond the call of duty. It's not your fault she forgot her purse, and you helped her out for a while. Also, everyone needs a safety net, and strangers are not it.
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