Words of wisdom from men of motion

By Connie Liu

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, "A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than 10 years' mere study of books." Because we are in constant motion, such conversations are hard to find. Cab drivers are among the few who have the opportunity to play the role of modern-day wise men. Few cabbies have let me escape their charge without some unique insight.

This isn't a phenomenon that I alone have witnessed. The experiences of several people on my floor show that the cab driver often regards himself as a combination of social commentator, sage, and therapist.

It doesn't surprise me that cab drivers are so ready with their advice and their views. These are people in a position to observe nearly every strata of human existence: drunk college students, travelers to far-off places, people coming home, or maybe the new kid in town who walks into unfamiliar territory.

Shuttling people from one place to another, it seems inevitable that cabbiesare obsessed with their passengers' origins. My roommate has encountered one Pakistani driver who is fascinated by her Middle-Eastern features. "You have eyes like the women of my country," he said. "They are docile, sweet-tempered." Little does he know that this docile young kinswoman is also a strong-willed Yale feminist.

Every time another friend steps into a cab, the driver will invariably see her dark skin and Indian features and ask if she knows how to make chutney or curry. She remembers one cab driver who turned out to be half-Hindi and half-Trinidadian. He talked about dishes that his Hindi mother used to make. "It is so good to talk about food with you," he said to her wistfully. "I miss home."

I find this penchant for Indian food curious. No taxi driver has ever asked me about Chinese food. My Chinese-American roommate, however, was once told by a taxicab driver that no white man would marry her. When she told him she was on her way to visit her caucasian boyfriend, he shook his head. "It's the state of society today," he said morosely. "Don't get pregnant," he added, as she shut the cab door.

Another cab driver, upon learning that I was from Yale, scoffed at the value of a college degree. This man holds three jobs: taxi-driver, assistant to an accident lawyer, and imitation Tommy Hilfiger/Donna Karan salesman. "I can buy my kid a Nintendo, and want to know why? 'Cause I'm an entrepreneur," he explained.

Sometimes it feels good to have an extra eye looking out for you, especially if you've just had a bad Saturday night in Washington D.C. One weekend, an underage friend of mine discovered her fake ID wasn't good enough to get into any of the Georgetown bars. She was tired of the scene, tired of her internship, discontent, and disheveled. She hailed a cab. Ishmael the driver saw her downcast face and asked, "Tell me, what is it? No men? No fun?" This elderly man from Canada then gave her an inspirational speech, telling her, "This is all so fleeting, and you are so young. The boys come and go; the nights turn rapidly into days. The best thing is knowledge, to learn!"

With those words of wisdom, he ordered her to spend her next Saturday in the public library—which she didn't. But she took his advice to heart and found solace in the aisles of Barnes & Noble the next afternoon.

Why do these cab drivers say the things they do? "Maybe they go crazy, driving around like that. Maybe they just start to think aloud, whether or not anyone's in the car," my roommate muses. It's a part of the job: they have to talk, otherwise they'd spend their entire careers in silence.

Or perhaps cabbie wisdom isn't so different from that of anyone else. It is the kind of wisdom gained over a period of time, after experiencing the ways of the world and talking to people heading different places, with different goals, different dreams.

As time goes on, the cab driver collects these experiences. Then he does something that people will do: he lays these stories out and sorts them to find some grain of universal truth. Like all humans with prejudices and opinions, he will express his version of that truth to anyone who will listen.

It amazes me that sometimes insight comes to be distilled in the oddest way, in the strangest of places.

Connie Liu is a junior in Pierson.

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