#68: "take a car"

I was at least 12 before I got on my first amusement park ride. Notice I didn't say roller coaster - my first park ride was the log flume at Busch Gardens. I wasn't such a thrill seeking child but I think that was partly because I didn't have anyone to show me that roller coasters were exciting and fun while simultaneously frightening. My father was (and still is) deathly afraid of any height at all - he's very shaky on a step stool - and my mother just wasn't in to it. I don't think she enjoyed the thrill of it. Once I discovered the amazing amount of adrenaline fueled fun that can be had while on a speeding ride I was hooked.

I used to ride coaster after coaster in quick succession. I would run around the park from one ride to another, pausing maybe to use the restroom if i passed one. I was never bothered by motion sickness, didn't get dizzy at heights, and was game for whatever new upside-down, cork-screw, stand-up or hang-down, pregnant pause at the top of the first drop so you're looking straight down ride the park had to offer.

But this letter isn't about roller coasters. It doesn't have anything to do with Six Flags (though I'd still like to go there once). It does have something to with getting older, though. I have discovered that I can't go on rides in such quick succession. My head has to catch up now, and where there was no dizziness or nausea there are just a bit. Age is hell, i suppose.

This letter is about that dizziness, that nausea, that back seat motion sickness hell that I feel these days. I know I've gotten old, and this feels like the type of thing that old people rant about, but I just don't enjoy riding in cabs.

It's not just that in yellow cabs I often have zero leg room. I try and hail the van cabs and they have plenty of room. No, it mostly that cabbies can't drive for shit. I know this is preaching to the choir, as many of you readers are New Yorkers, but how have we all not made such a fuss that they get better?

I get that cabbies want to get to where you're going as fast as they possibly can. This makes sense. Yet they shouldn't be going 50 MPH down Atlantic Avenue. They also don't ever need to feather the accelerator; the collective lead foot of this town makes most of my cab rides feel like the driver has popped the clutch and the car is just bucking down the road. Maybe worst of all - when the car is stopped at a red light, just put your foot on the damn brake pedal and leave it there. There is never a need to inch forward as if you were trying to sneak up on something; you're in a large mustard colored vehicle with a light on top that's pretty damn hard to miss, you're not sneaking up on anything.

If you can't tell, I tend to avoid taking cabs anywhere, but after long nights at work when we've had a show my employer pays for me to take a car home. Even after the latest of nights when I'm ready to fall over exhausted I have to sit and let my head catch up with me, just like I'm doing right now writing these words to you. I think it took the subway, like I should have.