DECEMBER 3, 2019 – Yesterday I took two Lyft rides—from my office to the dentist and back.
The first driver was originally Haitian About 40, he’d been in America (mostly NYC) for 25 years. He’d come to Minnesota to pursue a PhD in “international business.” He and some fellow scholars plan to form a consulting group focused on ending corruption in developing countries. He was well educated, articulate, impassioned about his anticipated career. He gave me a good feeling about America.
The second driver was from Pasadena. When I asked for his life story, he told me his mother was from International Falls, so he’d decided to try his luck back here in Minnesota. A graduate of a culinary school and the now defunct McNally Smith School of Music (St. Paul), the guy was a hyper-entrepreneur, quick to hand me his catering-event-organizing-sound-guy card. Oh, and lest we forget, he was driving for Lyft.
He was one of those talkers who neither invites nor allows conversational contributions other than “uh-huh.” Early in his monologue he mentioned his planned run for local public office. Just then an opening appeared for a question: “Why?” (This opportunity arose when all-too close contact with another vehicle broke his cadence.)
What poured forth for the remainder of the ride were the driver’s disjointed political views. I pictured his brain as an amusement park named “CRAZYLAND.” The rides whirled around so fast and the music played so frenetically, I with my cotton candy in hand stood no chance of jumping aboard and landing right side up.
The guy’s reasoning sprawled wildly. Contradictory sentiments competed for ascendancy. The ultimate dichotomy: people should be free to do as they please, except when they want to do as they please. He said he “didn’t like Trump, except he liked the way Trump ‘calls it like he sees it.’” [emphases mine] He was against “freeloaders,” especially immigrants, and thought government “needs to get done what needs to get done” but that “businesses should be allowed to run their businesses.” My favorite line: “A lotta people think two plus two equals yellow.”
When I alighted from the car, I was shaking, as if I’d gone five rounds on “The Plunger.” How many more people out there, I thought, are “CRAZYLAND” affiliates? People who are perfectly good at what they do for a living, who look normal driving down the highway, standing in line at the grocery store, ordering a beer and burger at the local sports bar or . . . doing whatever, but . . . once you open the gates to their range of knowledge, their tortured reasoning, their upside-down thinking, you discover a Midway in which all the rides are on hyperdrive and unattended . . . and the cotton candy is so sticky you need turpentine to clean off your fingers.
This is democracy, I told myself.
Those two Lyft rides left me where I’d started. The first one gave me . . . a lift. The second one plopped me straight back down to earth.
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
