I've heard that riding in the front seat of an Uber signals that you want to chat with the driver, and riding in the back seat means that you prefer silence. I always sit in the back.

But when I went to catch a ride from my house the other night, there was stuff in the van's back seat, so the front was the only option. As I squeezed in, the driver cheerfully asked, "Do you like the neighborhood?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess so," I said, still trying to get the seat belt on. The driver started rolling away.

As he drove, he kept muttering questions, increasingly quietly. Between his dwindling volume and Arabic accent, I couldn't really understand what he was asking, so I kept offering bland responses. "Uh huh." "Yeah." "Mmm."

After five minutes, there was at last a lull where he stopped muttering. To fill the silence, I elaborated: "This used to be a really quiet neighborhood. But since they connected the new bridge last year, traffic has gotten really bad here. There are just so many people now!"

At normal volume, the driver said, "Hey, I'm going to have to call you back. I have a passenger." And then he took the earbud out of his left ear.

We didn't talk for the rest of the drive.


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

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My name is Scott, and I'm an addict. I'm not an alcoholic. I almost never drink alcoholic beverages. Go »

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I don't know why car companies insist on calling their products "vehicles" now. Apparently "cars" became a dirty word and I missed it. But if you're going to change the term, consider your marketing messages carefully: As a matter of fact, yes, I have heard about radar, sonar, and infared technology in vehicles, such as submarines, aircraft carriers, and helicopters. Go »

Retrospection

If I recall the dates correctly, yesterday would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday. She lived to just shy of her 89th, despite a lifetime of chain smoking. I remember her as a sweet, generous woman who liked to laugh and teach me life's simple pleasures; a typical afternoon for us was playing crazy eights and baking cinnamon rolls. Go »

Happy anniversary!

Tragic Comedy began today in 2001.