Goddamn cab drivers: Part V

Now, I mentioned racist cab drivers before, but this is a different kind.

One day my brother and I missed the bus to school, so we decided to walk down the hill and catch a cab. Like most mornings the traffic was pretty hectic, with jackknives and rollovers at every block. There were a lot of cabs, but very few were vacant.

We were understandably frustrated as we were walking along, trying desperately to hail a cab. We’d already been missed by two empty ones at this point (the drivers were too busy negotiating their ways through traffic to notice us on the other side of the road), when I saw a cab heading straight for us. My brother didn’t see it because he was looking at the traffic coming from behind us.

I was about to call my brother when this shit happened:

The driver and I made eye contact, so I figured he would stop and pick us up. Wrong. He maintained the eye contact as he took down the TAXI sign from his windshield (the plastic type that clings to the glass). As he did this, his expression changed, as if to say, “You maldito chino!” and as he passed, he still maintained eye contact.

I wonder--did some Asian guy do something to him? Did a bunch of drunken Chinese men run a train on his mother when he was little and forced him to watch? Did some Japanese guy tie him up and cornhole him? Was he mugged and stabbed by an angry mob of chinky-eyed lunatics one cold, winter night as he was trying to deliver medicine to his dying grandmother?

Whatever it was, he looked pissed off.


To be continued…