Thursday night is date night in our household. The babysitter arrives, my wife gets ready and I pour myself a glass of wine and help the kids with homework before we go out. Last night we were meeting friends in Midtown East South. I just made up the name of this neighborhood but for those of you who don't know Manhattan, its South of 42nd street, North of 23rd street and East of 5th Avenue. For those of you who do know this city the area we were eating at is " no mans land." It's not really Midtown. It's not East enough to be Murry Hill. The East village is out of spitting range and so i really like my made up Midtown South East.
I wanted to take the Subway. We could walk three blocks our end and one block the other end and be there in 25 minutes. My suggestion of taking public transportation was not only vetoed but was viewed as teetering on insanity. We left our building with 30 minutes to spare before the rendez-vous; plenty of time to take the subway. ( one last plea was ignored).
We walked to the corner of our street and a major avenue and I stuck out a hand to catch a cab.
It wasn't a good sign that the cab we hailed swerved two wide lanes, and cut off four cars to stop and pick us up. I got into an argument with my wife, saying that i wouldn't get in because the driver is a madman, but the sub zero temperatures won me over because my bare hand used to hail had become numb and frost bitten after two minutes exposure to the elements.
As soon as we settled into the back seats and gave our destination , the driver put metal to the floor and rammed the gas pedal. Three seconds later he had to come to a near stand still as a bus pulled out from a stop. He then accelerated again. My head and neck were thrust forwards and backwards and I could have sworn that the first symptoms of whiplash permeated my upper body. I quickly opened the window gasping for some relief. The sudden rush of icy cold air provided some comfort for me as the wine that i had recently digested, made a concerted effort to re appear and see what was transpiring.
The driver obviously had a twitchy foot that did left to right motions and up and down movements without being aware of this disorder. The gas pedal was once again pressed down firmly and then immediately released as the same foot was beckoned towards the brake. His foot clearly didn't like being on the brake for long as it quickly moved back to the gas. My stomach was turning, my head was spinning, my neck was aching and my mood was deteriorating.
After four blocks of horizontal roller coaster riding I really couldn't take it any more and I screamed out" stop the cab now!" The driver slammed on the brakes. My wife looked momentarily away from her I-phone and casually asked me if we had arrived at the restaurant. She looked at the street signs outside and saw that we had made little progress. I described to her how I was feeling and couldn't understand how she hadn't experienced the same thrust and stop and re-thrust ride. She motioned to the driver to continue as planned and so i unwound the back window completely and stuck my head out for the remainder of the journey.
When i arrived at the restaurant ten minutes later I had developed an ice mustache and my hair was standing on end as if i had just put my finger in an electrical socket. My lips were totally blue and numb and I couldn't talk. Frozen salty tears had stained my cheeks . I paid the driver and gave him a healthy tip for manning the thrill ride so competently. My legs felt like jelly.
I looked deformed and disheveled. My wife was completely oblivious to my appearance and so was I until we entered the restaurant together and fellow diners waiting for their tables gave me such a wide berth that even my wife noticed something was astray. She stopped, looked at me and screamed. She had gone out on date night with the Abominable Snowmen A.K.A "The Yeti." I spent the next fifteen minutes in the bathroom straightening myself out. Thank you Mr. Gas Break Gas taxi man!
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