Ms. Cab-driver

So, I met a cab-driver today who is becoming a teacher. She had some really amazing thoughts about New Orleans and the people here.

When she first arrived to NOLA from up north 6 years ago, she was on a call in which a woman was trying to coerce her grandfather out of the house into the car. "It costs too much money." He kept yelling from the doorway. The granddaughter prodded and pleaded, but couldn't get the guy off the porch. After 10 minutes, the cabbie told the customer that she had to move along, but she'd come back when the old guy was ready to go. The granddaughter, replied, "No ma'am, he's ready and he's going." She proceeded to drag him out to the car. He hesitated by the door and said,"This will only be my third time in one of these motorized vehicles." Shocked, the driver asked him how he managed that, to which he replied, "I've never needed to go anywhere more than a mile from my home." He was 80 years old.

This is why the cabbie wants to be a teacher. Because she wants the kids of NOLA to have an experience that is bigger than the blocks that surround their house. She wants them to know that drug dealers and rappers aren't the only people who can get ahead in the world, and that having a good life doesn't necessarily equate to loads of cash and material things. She doesn't want them to think that the only options are to live poor or to "hustle." She's seen too many of the hustlers....in her neighborhood, in her cab, in the streets when she has dropped people off or picked them up.

She knows New Orleans like the back of her hand. She quit driving about a year ago - she needed a change. She gets the 7 year itch, she said, and needs to try something new. So, she started to pursue teaching. It was a long, slow process and she almost gave up. She was ready to go back to the cab when a teaching job popped up. She misses driving - she feels separated from the town, from what is happening. She used to know everything that was going on and now she is removed from it. Without the cab, she has no personal transporation and though she knows all of the bus routes, it just doesn't feel the same.

Her life is different now - carless and on a new path, possibly a more reckless one - she'll be a teacher, like me. Or, maybe, hopefully, I'll be a teacher like she is.