Neighborhood Botch
by Scott Hardie on March 10, 2025
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 »
Cliché
Mighty Girl found a fun and simple way to make her announcement. Go »Comedian
The bad news: I have a miserable cold (thanks Charlotte) and I slept for an hour last night. The good news: I had to speak in front of a hundred people today. Why is that good? Go »What Other Kitty Cats are as Good as You, the Bestest Kitty Cat in the Whole World, Yes You Are?
• none Go »Dr. Jerk
I wish doctors would treat me like a person, instead of a fat person. No matter what complaint sends me to the doctor in the first place, within minutes, every visit turns into a conversation about how I need to lose weight, and what will happen if I don't. Like I haven't tried a thousand times to lose weight. Go »R.I.P. Pat
Kelly's mother passed away last week. The event had been anticipated for decades: Pat was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a child, suffered kidney failure in 1995 and survived on her brother's donated kidney, and had five strokes and five heart attacks and countless operations, including emergency brain surgery in 2007 that changed her personality. She obviously possessed quite an inner resiliency even if she seemed petite and frail on the outside, but it was inevitable that she would someday lose the fight with her own body. Go »
