A strange but lovely conversation in a grey taxi

I arrive in a parking lot on a Friday afternoon. Usually, a parking lot is one of the least pleasant places to be on a Friday afternoon—but today, the concrete patch looks a little happier. My friends and I have just completed an extremely muddy multiday hike along the southwestern corner of Vancouver Island, and are about to return home. 

We have ordered a cab from a service called Orange Taxi. The cab is grey. We get on the road with a driver, whom we will call Cecil. He is truly excellent at driving—he seems to have each sharp corner and rickety bridge programmed into his brain. As the van passes newly familiar tracts of forest, my friends fall asleep in the backseat.

Me: Are you much into hiking around here?

Cecil: No, no, I had my fill of that in the military. Five years!

Me: Oh, when did you serve? 

Cecil: When I was 18. Exciting thing, for a boy that age. You give him a rifle and a backpack and he’s all set… You should see the Americans. We used to do training exercises with them. Things are very different over there. 

Me: How so?

Cecil: Well, in the American military, there are no handouts. They didn’t even give them food while training. They used to give the kids a live cow, and have them slaughter it if they wanted dinner… Very pragmatic people. They don’t do that in Canada, you know?

Me: I guess not, yeah. 

The conversation pauses for a little. Cecil has the odd habit of driving with sound effects. “Tchk, tchk, tchk,” he murmurs to himself each time the road bends. He hums out of tune when we see the ocean. My friends drift in and out of sleep. 

Me: When did you leave the military?

Cecil: When I was in my early 20s. I went to Ontario to study math.  

Me: What kind of math?

Cecil: All kinds—geometry, real analysis, combinatorics. And lots of computers. Math gives you a real leg up with computers.

Me: Did you end up working with computers? 

Cecil: Yeah, I worked at an insurance firm. Made programs to set insurance premiums. You know, evaluating the worth of a human life and whatnot—the good stuff. I worked for the BC government after a while. They laid off 1000 people all at once. There was some project in India that fell through, and I just quit after that. It was complete nonsense… I have a brother, though, and he went to school for engineering. He works over at an oil rig in Dubai. Makes a whole lot more money than me. You know, he owns five houses! I asked him if I could have one, and do you know what he said?

Me: What?

Cecil: He said, “no.” 

A few more minutes pass. We see about 25 sheep per minute. The sun hangs over the coast, sinking a little further down each time I look out the window. 

Me: Did you start driving cabs after you quit working in insurance?

Cecil: Yeah, I started my company. We have four cabs. One of them is a van, but it burns much more gas, so we don’t drive that usually.

Me: Long hours?

Cecil: Yeah, I pick people up off the trail all hours of the day and night. You guys were on time. Sometimes people are hours late. They say, “We didn’t think you’d wait for us!” I always wait. Sometimes they call in the middle of the night—someone needs to go to the hospital, or something. I’m right there.

Me: How many other drivers are at your company? 

Cecil: I have four people working for me. But sometimes they don’t turn up, and then I have to go pick the person up. There are two women, and two men, who drive cabs. And let me tell you, I hear so many excuses from these ladies. I could be a gynecologist by now! I think they say things just to embarrass me, so I won’t ask questions. And I don’t! One of them is a grandmother, and every other day, she can’t drive because she has to babysit. My daughter works for me too.

Me: Does she drive? 

Cecil: No, she does my books. She does them all on her phone… Of course, she just lost her phone. So now, I guess we have to record all the cab trips coming up, and just take an average? Who knows? 

I certainly don’t know (and many Americans have claimed to me that offering dubious tax advice is illegal), so I nod and continue watching the sheep.

Cecil: What about you? Are you working?

Me: Not really—I’m in college. I don’t know what I’m studying, but I’ve been doing some English, some math. 

Cecil: What college are you studying at?

Me: Harvard College? I finished my first year just now. 

Cecil: That’s out East, huh?

Me: Yeah, it’s in Massachusetts.

Cecil: Hmm. And what university?

Me: Oh, well—it is a university.

Cecil: You can do a lot with a math degree, you know. Better things than insurance. Do you have a green card? 

Me: No, I’m on a student visa.

Cecil: You should look into becoming a citizen… if you’re into math stuff, the CIA is always hiring. I have a friend who works there. Says all he has to do is ask for a new computer, and it appears on his desk. Bang!

Me: Yeah, I don’t know. I feel like they might ask me to do things I wouldn’t want to do. 

Cecil: You think that isn’t true with insurance? Lots of things are like that… Anyways, I’m just saying: you’ve got options, kid. You’ve got options.

The phrase “you’ve got options” is intended encouragingly, but invokes more complicated feelings in this odd, choice-paralysed era. Cecil turns into the ferry terminal parking lot, and I ponder these options during the 90-minute voyage to Vancouver. That night, I dream about cows and oil rigs.