"Thank goodness you're smart!"

I get a call tonight to pick up at a non-existant address. I show up where it should be (8th & Brazee), call the phone number, and am told that the actual place to pick up is thirty blocks further north at 8th & Alberta.

As I'm turning a block and a half away from the correct address, a strung-out looking white woman with stringy hair literally runs out in front the cab waving at me. I of course stop, and she tells me that she's the person I'm there to pick-up.

"Thank goodness you're smart!" she says. Shen then tells me that she's not from this part of town so she doesn't know the address. How being from a different part of town keeps her from reading numbers, I don't know.

She then launches into a stream-of-consciousness ramble about how it's good I was smart because that wasn't a good part of town for a white woman to be in (not true), how much she likes my music, it's Latin isn't it? (no) Pig Latin, no Lebanese (yes), she has lots of international friends, mixed bag, from all over, she grew up on an Indian reservation in Washington, do I know it? (no) She used to be a drug addict, but not anymore (unlikely), though she does drink (obviously), but she learned that drugs are illegal the hard way so she doesn't do them anymore. She got in a lot of trouble in drugs once where she's from in Canada, and it was serious enough that they could have taken her Canadian citizenship away even though she was born there (um, no). Do I have a card? (hell no) Do I have a personal number (hell no). She's only in town for a couple weeks and takes cabs to get everywhere, her estranged husband will pay when we get there. Wow, she likes my music. That wasn't a good part of town for a white woman to be in, all the white women she saw there were drug addicts (...). Here's how to get to 14th & Yamhill (incorrect, and thus disregarded). Oh, so you can go this way too? Hold on!

She jumps out of the car and I just shrug to myself, for this woman to run would be keeping in complete character with the night so far. But to my amazement, her husband indeed does come from around the corner, and does in fact pay me. In keeping with my expectations at the beginning of the trip, there is no tip.

I netted $5 an hour tonight. I could've ridden out my shift and bumped that up to around $10, but I decided to turn in early, something I've never done before. Being able to do some packing for my upcoming move and get a good night's sleep just struck me as being vastly superior to a work that, by 2am was solidly entrenched as my worst ever from a financial standpoint. The thing is, when the back-up super handed me my slip for a car I absolutely hate, I came really close to handing it back to him, saying "thanks, but no thanks," and not working tonight.

Always trust your first instinct.