Late Monday night (technically Tuesday morning since it was after midnight) I picked up a pair of lovely young ladies on Bourbon St. Before we proceed with the story, let me define "lovely" and "young". By "young" I mean "my age" -- 46 to be precise. By "lovely" I mean that when they forced me to guess their age, I undershot by 10 years. And it wasn't that I wanted to flatter them... OK, maybe a little, but definitely not ten years' worth.
Anyway, I could tell before they ever got on board the bike that it was going to be a fun ride. "Hey, I have an idea!" one of them said, walking up to me with a big smile. "Why don't you give us a ride, and we give you money?" I thought that sounded like the best idea I had heard in quite a while.
They were fraternal twins as it turned out, one blonde, the other redhead. When I introduced myself, they told me that they had a brother named Mark, and I said, that based on the name, he was probably a pretty cool guy, and they said, yes, he was. None of these details are really relevant to the point of the story, but these ladies were wanting to get mentioned in the blog, so I hope they read this and enjoy it.
As we began the ride, I asked them the usual questions: Where are you from? Have you been to New Orleans before? Are you enjoying your visit? Then they started asking about me, and the conversation settled into a pattern that is repeated almost verbatim over and over again every time I'm out on the pedicab:
Them: "So, where are you from?"
Me: "Well, I grew up here in this area, moved away for 27 years, and just got back in August."
Them: "So where did you move to for 27 years?"
Me: "Different places, but for most of the last 16 years I was living and working in the Balkans. A couple of years in Albania, several years in Kosova, and most recently, a few years in the Republic of Macedonia."
It was at this point in this very routine dialogue that something outside of the routine occurred -- not anything earthshaking or urgent, but something just strange enough to be intriguing. We were waiting at a traffic light on Canal St., which was almost deserted at this time of night. Right as I mentioned Macedonia, some guy walked by us, a kind of rough-looking guy, probably not homeless but just a step up from that perhaps. Apparently overhearing me mention Macedonia, he called out to me a greeting in Macedonian: "Kako si?" ("How are you?" It's actually the same in pretty much all the South Slavic languages: Serbian, Bulgarian, Croatian, etc.) If this were Detroit, for example, or some other city with a high concentration of South Slavic immigrants, this whole thing would have been a lot less surprising, but here in New Orleans, I don't think that very many people are even aware that there's a country called Macedonia.
I responded in my best Macedonian (which is pretty poor to tell the truth), "Fine, thank you! How are you? And where did you learn that?" He just shrugged and walked on. Apparently he had exhausted his Macedonian vocabulary with those two words.
"Well that was bizarre!" I commented to my passengers.
"Apparently the universe just wanted to verify that you were telling the truth about living in those places," one of them replied.
------------------------------------
That story reminded me of another one that happened a while back -- a bit similar perhaps but even more striking in my opinion.I was riding around the Central Business District looking for fares. Spotting a young couple at a corner, I asked if they would like a ride. "No thank you," one them replied. "Actually we rode with your company earlier today. It was really nice. Our driver was Jenny."
"Oh, yes, Jenny!" I replied. "She's awesome!" because Jenny is a really cool colleague. She works part time with us and the rest of the time as a concierge at a hotel, which means that when she's working her other job she's able to steer a lot of dispatches our way. And besides that, she's just a fun, sweet person.
Anyway, just as I said that Jenny was awesome, who should go walking by but Jenny! Turns out she lives there in the Central Business District, and she just happened to be out walking her dogs just in time to overhear me singing her praises to her former passengers.
"Wow, Jenny!" I told her. "If I had known you were eavesdropping, I would have tried to come up with something a little stronger than awesome!"
This is the kind of story that it's almost impossible not to end with, "And the moral of the story is..." On the other hand, the moral seems so obvious that I won't even bother to state it.
No comments:
Post a Comment