60 cent tips

Are deserving of cab drivers who give unsolicitated advice while you're on the way to a movie in Georgetown. I've had my share of cab driver experiences in DC, and this is one that I was surprised not to have encountered earlier. Most cab drivers are very interested in talking to the girls they have to transport from point to point. One example being a guy who asked about girls going to gym and lifting weights, it was absolutely unheard of to him ... he had the attitude that the gym was for men and lesbians apparently. In another case, a cab driver offered to be my boyfriend and teach me Arabic.

This time I got an Iranian man who advised me that I had chosen the wrong type of graduate degree to pursue ... according to him, I should be pursuing law because that's where all the money is. Then he went on to tell me his family's woes, how all America cares is money and materialism, how he has a degree in electrical engineering, yet he's a cab driver ... and on and on. I can sympathize for a bit, but not when they start preaching to me ... he kept trying to convince me that money was the only way to go. My argument for pursuing a career I might find interesting or enjoy (like in the government) that may not fatten up my paycheck too much was apparently naive to him. Then he had to tell me about what a man-ho he was back in his younger days and how his sons are continuing the trend, he bragged about having an italian wife. Stuck in traffic with this guy I told him he could let me off and gave him my usual payment to cabbies, $7, then he told me it was two zones, thus $8.40. So I just gave him two dollars more and then walked the rest of the 3 blocks to the theater.

When I gave him the money, I heard the unclick of the car doors, which I've begun to notice when riding cabs these days. All of a sudden now, once I'm in a cab, I'm in prison, enduring the conversation of the cab driver, and when I reach my destination, it's not until I pay the fare that I hear the distinctive sound of the car unlocking. It makes me wonder, if the doors were locked by the driver, could I still let myself out???