Sunday, March 26, 2006

What did I learn in the taxi today #2

1) Picked up an old customer with a city card. Last time it did not work and she had to pay with money. This time it was OK. She sat silent for most of the journey, wondering no doubt if that idiot of a driver would get her card to work this time.

2) Picked up an old man and took him to Heikkitori. He spoke in a very strange way as though he had a speach impediment. It turns out he had a by-pass operation and some of the "plaque" in the arteries had got loose and had lodged in his brain, and he had lost the ability to speak. He was going to the health centre to get remedial lessons which would help him to speak again. Besides not being able to speak properly he had lost the ability to write. Letters and words were completely incomprehensible, and could just as well be chineese characters for all the sense they made to him. His memory was gone so he could not remember phone numbers for example, and he found himself in a fix cos he could not write things down, and if somebody else wrote the numbers down he could not read them. Have a heart operation and you go from being a well educated man to becoming illiterate.

3) Took 3 women to Sello. The woman in the front was an invalid. The two women in the back nattered away like maniacs. One stuffed her face with a rye bread sandwich and laughed as though she were about to choke, and spat crumbs down her breasts. Her mate talked so fast it sounded like the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun and at the end of every sentence she made a long keening laugh as a form of punctuation. They were going to see an afternoon show that featured belly-dancing.

4) Pick up a young nurse who did not know where she wanted to go. Somewhere along the road to Jorvi, and industrial estate near Laaksolahti. Her friends had been drinking all morning and she was missing all the "fun". I took her to some run down industrial estate on a dead-end road and left her shivering at a padlocked gate. I wondered as I drove away why is it that some girls will insist in exposing their belly buttons in the middle of winter.

5) Took a well dressed couple from Kaunianen to Rittarihoune for the "Knight's Ball". I drove them straight to the door because the woman had on her dancing shoes and did not want to walk in them. I got honked at an had to drive away much to her annoyance.

6) Took a couple to a wedding in Otaniemi. The lady was wearing a wonderful perfume. I asked her what it was. She said "Open Heart" I have never heard of it. I do so hope it was not by some company called "Surgery". Now that I think of it perhaps it was called "happy heart" I was still thinking about how weird it must be to loose the ability to read and write let alone speak after open heart surgery.

7) Picked up a mother and your daughter from the airport. The daughter had a toy fox called Toppi. The navigation system has an english woman giving me directions and the little girls wondered who was taking. I told her it was "Katie Kettu" She asked her mother if this was true. Her mother said no it was not true and that I was trying to trick her. I insisted it was "Katie Kettu" and the little girl was happy with that.

8) Back to the airport and picked up a woman who had come from Leevi. She had been skiing. Had gone to sauna with a shaman who had washed her and purified her. Apparently he had washed all of her sins away with ice cold water. Not only her passed sins but also the future ones.
She seemed to be very happy with this thought of cleansing.

9) Last lift of the night was a Scottish woman. We sang together

Bee-Baw-Babbity Babbity Babbity
Bee-Baw-Babbity Babbity Babbity
a lassie or a wee laddie

Ah widnae hae a lassie-o a lassie-o a lasssi-o
Ah widnae hae a lassie-o a lassie-o a lasssi-o
Ah'd raither hae a wee laddie.

Kneel doon kiss the groon, kiss the groon, kiss the groon
Kneel doon kiss the groon, kiss the groon, kiss the groon
A lassie or a wee laddie?

It was a good day.

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