SEPTEMBER 10, 2019 – One view of humankind is that we’re a bunch of incompetent dolts. Another view is that we’re just the opposite.
You might say, we’re like LaGuardia Airport. It can be your worst nightmare or, against, the odds, everything can turn out just fine.
When my younger sister, Jenny, flew to LaGuardia last month, the construction-snarled traffic was so bad it took her hours to find her way into the city. Thus it was for thousands of other travelers, as reported in The New York Times.
Yesterday, however, in the course of my trip to New York, everything ran like a Swiss watch.
After an abrupt landing, we rolled straight to the gate. By the time I reached baggage claim, there was my luggage. A smiling woman at the information desk a few feet away, located there for me exclusively, it seemed, told me about immediately available ground transit options. She mentioned that Lyft or Uber could shave 20 minutes off my trip and directed me straight to the app-based ride pick-up area nearby.
For the first time I took advantage of a group ride via my Lyft app. Within five minutes of placing my order, my car arrived. The other two passengers, a woman from Atlanta and another from Australia, were already on board.
By the time I’d fastened my seatbelt, we were well on our way. With Manhattan straight ahead, I got the others talking—places of origin, their lines of work, their takes on life.
The driver was a retired “press man.” Turns out he’d migrated here from the Dominican Republic 20 years ago and had gone to work running the Heidelberg presses for a large printing concern.
I got quite a story out of him. To his riders’ amazement, he claimed (convincingly) that by simply rubbing a sheet of paper between his thumb and his forefinger, he could tell how many sheets would equal an inch. Everyone laughed when I asked, “Same goes for money?”
“Yes I can!” he said.
One of the women, who was from Atlanta, was head of HR for a British Company with offices in NY. She traveled widely, and had a good sense of what was going on in the world.
The Australian woman had won the “green card lottery,” and was giving America a try. Like the Atlanta woman, the Aussie was well traveled and well-informed.
Before I knew it, I was at my destination. I wished my fellow travelers bon chance. In chorus they reciprocated.
As the car sped away, I looked at the surrounding tall buildings, all standing plumb and alit with a steady glow. As it turns out, the world can work, despite what we tell ourselves.
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
