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ISSUE #32.50 • NEWS • RIDE-ALONG
[NIGHT CABBIE]

"Let's go to the Chart House."

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BY NIGHT CABBIE | nightcabbie at wweek dot com

[October 18th, 2006] "Let's go to the Chart House."

It's quite late on a Sunday evening, and I tell my passenger, a tipsy middle-aged man with a comb-over, that it's almost certainly closed. He asks for other recommendations as to what's open at this hour. He's not exactly the Roxy type, so I hesitate.

"Tell me, where do you and the other cab drivers go?"

"I don't speak for the others, but I myself go to Holman's."

So we're off, and he insists I come in and eat, leaving the meter running. "Oh, I'll tip you like two, three hundred bucks, don't worry about it, come have dinner with me." I roll my third eye at that, but I am hungry. And so we talk. And talk. And talk.

I remind him of his ex-wife, apparently. "She's about your age, that was part of the problem, really. But she's a researcher like you, into neuroscience, although she's a straight biologist and you're more like a psychologist."

Nascent psychologist that I am, I ask the gentle questions, say the appropriate reinforcing things. I want to help him. He seems like a good guy. And when I drop him in front of his house, he does in fact write in a $300 tip on the credit slip. "That's about what I pay my therapist, and I got more out of tonight than I usually do sitting on her couch."

I'm stunned, both by the tip and the compliment. And he didn't even ruin it by asking for my phone number.












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RECENT COMMENTS ON “"Let's go to the Chart House."”

7

"another service profession" indeed.... I was wondering if this idiot would have the balls to actually say what he was implying with regard to comparing my giving an hour of near-professional therapy ...

nightcabbie, Nov 7th, 2006 11:24pm
8

Can you be more obtuse? I just said taking advantage of people is wrong. Which is exactly what you did. You try to act like you are morally above it but what you did was take advantage of someone. ...

evandors, Dec 14th, 2006 4:18pm
9

Can _you_ be more obtuse? Hmm, let's see here....he was merely "tipsy" when he got into the cab, so after driving around to check other places he'd have been basically sober before we even got to Holm...

nightcabbie, Dec 19th, 2006 4:42pm
10

Oh yeah, some folks that post here, quite small in number yet extremely high in total word count, might assume that "genius mathematician/musician" refers to me, rather than _my_ ex. My being the sel...

nightcabbie, Dec 26th, 2006 2:13am
 
 
 





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