They're Just Drivers (and I'm Just a Baker)

I've just been dropped off at word by a man whose daughter busted the window of his truck. Apparently she had moved to Seattle a couple of weeks before and the leg of whatever piece of furniture she was hauling penetrated the glass. 

He's in a white truck that requires way too much stealth for me to get into. I grasp the faithful handle in the interior door and pray I can get in without embarassing myself. I'm too short for this shit and I've told myself this for years. But despite the mantra, I've only grown maybe an inch since I was seventeen. 

I'm twenty-one now. I don't have a car...that's what I tell my Uber drivers anyway. But the truth is that I don't have a license. 

It's too embarassing to say. 

"You can get in the front if you want," the driver tells me. He's wearing a ball cap and displaying words of art on his arms. His truck is nice. 

But mama didn't raise a fool. I stutter that I'd rather sit in the back. He's fine with it. 

"Sorry about this whistling," he tells me. I never caught his name but I suppose I could just check the Uber receipt. "My daughter busted my back window." 

I turn. Sure enough, there's a web of black duct-tape protecting the truck from the outside elements. He tells me about the incident and then says, "Yep. My baby is in Seattle." 

He says that he doesn't want her to pay for the damage even though she offered to pay. I tell him he sounds like my dad. 

He laughs at this. I don't know why. It's one of those filler laughs that buttons up the silence. For the rest of the ride we talk about how his girlfriend speaks Spanish when she's pissed off at him. We also talk about his arm full of tattoos. 

"I got my first one when I was fourteen," he tells me. "In a guy's basement...drinkin' beer and smokin' weed." He smiles like he's in love with old memories. 

I don't blame him. I tell him that I'd be terrified of getting a tattoo from a needle I don't entirely trust. I ask him if it was a stick 'n poke. 

"No. It was a tattoo gun." 

He tells me that tattoos were illegal in Fort Wayne back then. I say, "Oh really?" as though I believe him. (Later I find out that, despite my uncertainty of truth to this, it was in fact illegal in Fort Wayne until the 1990's.)

It's hard to read Uber drivers. They're like a shadow in the background or an extra in a movie. They're just drivers. I try to tell myself they're people. 

I'm having a weird day. 

Someone left their pregnancy test in the handicap bathroom stall. I can't help but wonder what the result was but I'm not about to check. 

Why would you just leave a box of pregnancy tests (obviously opened, no doubt) in a public bathroom? How sad this person's life must be; to find out you may or may not be pregnant in a grocery store bathroom. 

Women have hard lives, you know? I contemplate this while sitting on the toilet, pregnancy tests in hindsight, and trying not to cry. What a weird life. 

I haven't had a pregnancy scare yet. I hope she wasn't sixteen and discovering she's pregnant by a boy named Tommy on the football team. For some reason, I imagine her blonde. She's probably late for cheer practice. She probably didn't want her parents to find out she was considering the possibility and that's why she did it in a public restroom. Maybe she's considering plan b (and I don't mean the contraceptive).

This makes me even more depressed. 

But why do I automatically assume the worst with pregnancy? She could have been told she could never have children, whoever this woman was, and found a miracle has happened. 

Whatever. I tell myself, "As long as I'm not the one pregnant." 

Later that night I find out that North Korea has launched a missile over Japan. Those fucking bastards. How can I enjoy my goddamned martini tonight at dinner if I'm thinking about Kim Jong Un and his "projectile dysfunction"? 

I try not to worry about the incoming war and, instead, focus on the bread rolls I have to bake.