Look after your parents, all. Given the state of the world and the intentional tearing down of health care and dignity, it's better if you can take care of them yourself.
One of our pipe dreams is to save up enough money to buy a little homestead (take that phrase with a grain of salt) somewhere, still within our country but with the space and ability to build a cottage or two to house our parents, so they can live out their retirement somewhere nice and without relying on an overworked and underpaid system.
Such a beautiful story in a few sentences. I think everyone can relate and simultaneously find how unique this experience was.
Thanks for sharing, it adds life in the middle of arid subjects I can be caught into.
Thanks. I searched HN for the link and nothing turned up. Should have searched for the title I guess. But the good thing is there are always some who missed it.. including me.
Is there a movie about a similar story? We've talked about something vaguely resembling Kent's post with my mom last week and I don't think she has seen this in writing (certainly not on HN, ha).
I take great care to stay vigilant for these opportunities. Recently, I found myself in a sadness for the lack of changes I was capable of making to our life’s systemic dysfunctions - be it natural or artificial - and found my time was much better spent improving the lives around me directly, individually or in small groups.
I’ve long had the philosophy that the world has enough problems and that it’s not my place to add to them, but this philosophy also gave me a motivation to move mountains for solutions - and would be upset when I inevitably couldn’t. I think this perspective has been the best middle ground between what I’m capable of, and what I want to accomplish.
It’s really not. The message is true and important, but the writing itself is saccharine and overly sentimental. I came away knowing very little about the driver and his passenger. The details that were provided were flat played into tired and hackneyed tropes.
End of life is terrifying... Especially the idea of facing it alone, with all your friends and family long gone (or, worse yet, having been abandoned), is heartbreaking.
We have to reckon with the fact that even surrounded by friends and family, at the moment our life finally ends we are alone inside our own mind. Even if it is scary, we can take solace in the fact that it is a fleeting moment.
Buddhism helps us learn healthy detachment. This can be detachment from things, people and even ourselves; the healthy part being the balance that still allows us to appreciate and love them, even knowing one day we must lose them. Pushing those things away to protect ourselves from the pain of loss is unhealthy. Remember the middle way.
In The Book of Joy the Dalai Lama states that he approaches meditation as a preparation to die well. I don’t know if that’s what you meant by “prepare for it every day” but what you said reminded me of all this.
Small acts of kindness are more than enough to make someone else’s day. They sometimes even change lives. I hope this story reminds people that this is not just an empty platitude.
I drove a taxi for about 3.5 years. Mostly it was random people going places. Taxi driving is not the most intellectually stimulating job, so I amused myself by talking to my passengers to figure out if they had anything to teach me. After a few shifts I became aware of a Metaphysical Matching Algorithm, where I was being sent specific passengers for reasons more than just 'transportation'.
I'm still in contact with a woman I met on my 8th shift. She txt'd me for a ride ~4 days after her taxi ride. I remembered her, but couldn't figure out why she'd decided to call me back: 'I talk to everyone, but I didn't talk to them'. On her follow up ride she reminded me of the little informative txt message I'd sent them after I'd driven away, and how that little act motivated her to reach out to me when she needed to go to the store for a suitcase. She eventually made a short film that was inspired by how we met. The specific details are all wrong, which is why it's only "inspired by a true story", lol. The series of passengers that led me to my future-friend was 1. passenger going home from the hospital in central Phoenix [delay], 2. lady going home to Mesa [transfer fare - 15 miles], 3. Grandma going to the pharmacy [delay], then I got my 'appointment' to meet my future-friend in the metropolitan area's far southeast corner.
Sometimes my random questions revealed that my passenger had interesting experiences, such as the fellow who'd spent a lot of time on the secret bases in Nevada: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33640535 (My username was inspired by K5 user "Zombie Jesus Christ", whom I eventually visited in jail in California. Followup comment in this thread tells of my username's origin story.)
I've commented before about the passenger I bailed out of jail. I distinctly remember the night I met him at the convenience store at Cave Creek & Bell Rd: "Are you available?" "Sure, hop in." He'd come to Arizona on a technology contract with a big bank, but the contract was canceled. Then his van and everything he owned got stolen. I don't remember the series of fares that led me to be in exactly his location that night... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34157865
Lots of stories like this. One passenger leads to the next. When I was between passengers sometimes I followed my intuitions trying to figure out where I'd find my next passenger. I tried to talk to everyone: everyone has a story & I tried to figure out if they had something I thought interesting. Sometimes I had the sense that I had 'appointments', othertimes I had the sense that there was no one else to meet that day.
One of my standard lines of inquiry for couples, or people who mentioned their relationship, was 'how did you meet?' Sometimes it was a boring story ("met in elementary school"), sometimes intuition made their improbable connection possible.
You’d like Arthur Koestler’s “Roots of Coincidence”, if you haven’t already read it.
I’d wave this away as metaphysical waffle if I also hadn’t had a few too many almost ordained seeming moments. Right place, right time sort of thing, what on earth are you doing in this cornfield miles from anywhere at 3am, never mind me?
My grandfather was a taxi cab driver in New York City during the 60s and 70s. After his third mugging, he changed jobs. I guess we each get different experiences.
Wow! Really enjoyed reading it. From the title, I thought it'd be someone's Uber ride rant - overcharged etc. But, it turned out to be exact opposite - an emotional one. I also discovered the writer is an author and not just a blogger.
So far, I've read only success stories. I think I can delve into reading similar stories. There a recommendation on this page - "Neither Dog Nor Wolf"; Maybe, I can start with that one.
I have been fortunate enough (privileged enough?) to feel comfortable picking up hitchhikers (or simply people walking along the road) over the years, and while most aren't particularly noteworthy, a few have been rough.
One teenage boy had just been thrown out of his house, with nothing other than a torn shirt and shorts, by his drunk father. I drove him to his girlfriend's place.
One desperate father had taken a bus as far as he could, but still had miles to walk to get to his mother's place and back home before his kids would wake up in the morning.
I wrote about those and my other recollections a while back[1], but none as memorable as this piece.
I've been a hitchhiker and I've picked up hitchhikers though not in years as they're less common today where I live and I've been a parent and I won't pick up hitchhikers with my kids in the car. So while I was going to say "I don't think there's much risk" I guess I must admit I do acknowledge some risk involved, given that I won't do it with my kids aboard.
But overall hitchhikers are people just like you and me, the difference being they haven't got a car, obviously. I figure the worst that would happen is I'm robbed and my car stolen, which would stink but the risk is infinitesimal and the benefit I perceive in helping out my fellow human is worth it to me. Notably, I am male; my calculous would likely be different if I were female.
There's also the typical caveat of minding one's common sense & gut. If someone looks like a basket case I'm unlikely to pick them up, or if it's an odd hour/past dark, the area is remote etc. But someone on an busy onramp to I-40 during daytime, why not?
I've experienced both sides, and been more afraid as a hitchhiker than as the driver, mostly from terrible driving vs. any direct bodily threat. I'm a large male too, though maybe always-connected & cell phones would actually make this safer for women?
A guy picked me up when I was hitchhiking out of Whitehorse, Yukon (or maybe it was Haines Junction?). I should have been suspicious since he had just left a bar (and for some reason had hundreds and hundreds of empty bottles in the back of his pickup truck — for recycling?).
Yeah, he's swerving on the highway. He even let me know the RCMP were very serious about drunk driving. I offered to drive but he declined my offer.
It was the only time I saw the Northern Light in full spectacle — he pulled over for that. Blew my mind (although, at the same time, I was running on very little sleep).
While hitchhiking, I was once picked up by a mother with her young children in the backseat. It seemed odd even to me that she would take such a risk with a stranger, but in the course of the drive she explained that her eldest daughter was a serial hitchhiker and that it gave her peace of mind to provide the sort of positive encounters that she hoped her daughter would experience.
I regularly pick people up, but wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve really given it thought.
For me - I’m a 6’2” bearded dude. I drive a Jeep and almost never have the doors or top on it in the summer. I’m also armed and have had some training.
Being in an open vehicle means that anyone around me in traffic can see what’s going on, so I’m reasonably confident a hitchhiker isn’t going to try to take me hostage or directly threaten me with a weapon. It also couldn’t be any better ventilated, so I’m able to pick people up whose “odor” would others make it difficult to get a ride.
I’ve probably picked up 100 or more hitchhikers at this point. I’ve had a couple that were obviously unhinged, more than a few people who were drunk or stoned to the point they had no business in public, and a surprising number of people who I would have never expected to take me up on my offer of a ride.
One of my favorite memories of this is when I found myself in Charlottesville, VA at about 1am, wide awake, in a growing snowstorm with nothing to do. My Jeep didn’t have doors or a top even though it was ~10ºF out. There was a little over a foot of snow on the ground, and the city buses had stopped as a result. I ended up driving back and forth all over downtown as the bars closed, taking college kids back to their homes when I found them stumbling through the snow trying walk back.
I often wonder how many of them woke up the next day questioning their own sanity. “How did I get home last night? I remember walking, then got a ride in a Go-Kart… Wait a sec - was that Hagrid driving!?”
You just need to be prepared to out crazy whatever you encounter. My plan, if it ever went sideways, was to pin the throttle and take my hands off the wheel. Fortunately it never came to that.
years ago, i picked up a couple of very young and beautiful women in downtown Denver hitchhiking up to Winter Park. They were from Chile, barely spoke English, and worked at the resort for the season. I asked them to promise me they'd never hitchhike again from where i picked them up. I had no interest in seeing their photos/bodybags on the news.
I did this once while returning from a road trip from Boston to the northern tip of New Hampshire and back. Younger and dumber?
I picked up some 50+ year old man with very long brown hair (down to his butt). He was definitely an outsider. Told me stories, how the FBI interrogated him once for having a book (I forget which one). How he used to work as a guard at the local jail, then as a cook at a castle-like hotel (both in the area). How his stress free life and eating local herbs/forest plants has prevented his hair from graying. Talked about his tiny, simple house with two rooms. He told me about American ginseng (illegal to harvest btw), and we pulled off the side of the road to find some. The plant made part of my lips swell a bit. Had that "lots of enzymes" flavor (like how peaches/strawberries/etc can tickle the inside of your mouth, but much stronger).
He said he had an wife in Kentucky that he hadn't finished divorcing, and then he asked me to drive him all the way back to Boston. He didn't even request to stop by his house. I let him out in downtown and he walked off into the night, presumably towards the airport.
Edit: oh yeah, i forgot that craziest part. He said people have been lnyched during his time living there. (Sorry if this is too dark, but all things considered, its hard to believe everything he said)
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing. Such acts of selfless kindness are what make life beautiful. They enrich everyone - the giver, the receiver and all those who witness such acts.
173 comments
[ 54.4 ms ] story [ 698 ms ] threadOne of our pipe dreams is to save up enough money to buy a little homestead (take that phrase with a grain of salt) somewhere, still within our country but with the space and ability to build a cottage or two to house our parents, so they can live out their retirement somewhere nice and without relying on an overworked and underpaid system.
What Happened to Lee
April 2020
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878136
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33283652
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14586118/
The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3918783 - May 2012 (188 comments)
The URL of that one (http://www.zenmoments.org/the-cab-ride-ill-never-forget/) includes more background info, including the book this piece was published in.
I’ve long had the philosophy that the world has enough problems and that it’s not my place to add to them, but this philosophy also gave me a motivation to move mountains for solutions - and would be upset when I inevitably couldn’t. I think this perspective has been the best middle ground between what I’m capable of, and what I want to accomplish.
One thing I enjoyed about early Covid was the ‘blitz spirit’ that occurred before it got all politicized.
I’d like to recapture that without the doom.
Buddhism helps us learn healthy detachment. This can be detachment from things, people and even ourselves; the healthy part being the balance that still allows us to appreciate and love them, even knowing one day we must lose them. Pushing those things away to protect ourselves from the pain of loss is unhealthy. Remember the middle way.
In The Book of Joy the Dalai Lama states that he approaches meditation as a preparation to die well. I don’t know if that’s what you meant by “prepare for it every day” but what you said reminded me of all this.
I'm still in contact with a woman I met on my 8th shift. She txt'd me for a ride ~4 days after her taxi ride. I remembered her, but couldn't figure out why she'd decided to call me back: 'I talk to everyone, but I didn't talk to them'. On her follow up ride she reminded me of the little informative txt message I'd sent them after I'd driven away, and how that little act motivated her to reach out to me when she needed to go to the store for a suitcase. She eventually made a short film that was inspired by how we met. The specific details are all wrong, which is why it's only "inspired by a true story", lol. The series of passengers that led me to my future-friend was 1. passenger going home from the hospital in central Phoenix [delay], 2. lady going home to Mesa [transfer fare - 15 miles], 3. Grandma going to the pharmacy [delay], then I got my 'appointment' to meet my future-friend in the metropolitan area's far southeast corner.
Sometimes my random questions revealed that my passenger had interesting experiences, such as the fellow who'd spent a lot of time on the secret bases in Nevada: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33640535 (My username was inspired by K5 user "Zombie Jesus Christ", whom I eventually visited in jail in California. Followup comment in this thread tells of my username's origin story.)
I've commented before about the passenger I bailed out of jail. I distinctly remember the night I met him at the convenience store at Cave Creek & Bell Rd: "Are you available?" "Sure, hop in." He'd come to Arizona on a technology contract with a big bank, but the contract was canceled. Then his van and everything he owned got stolen. I don't remember the series of fares that led me to be in exactly his location that night... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34157865
Lots of stories like this. One passenger leads to the next. When I was between passengers sometimes I followed my intuitions trying to figure out where I'd find my next passenger. I tried to talk to everyone: everyone has a story & I tried to figure out if they had something I thought interesting. Sometimes I had the sense that I had 'appointments', othertimes I had the sense that there was no one else to meet that day.
One of my standard lines of inquiry for couples, or people who mentioned their relationship, was 'how did you meet?' Sometimes it was a boring story ("met in elementary school"), sometimes intuition made their improbable connection possible.
(Intuition is when we do things that turn out well, without having a well-formed logical reason for doing so: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/well/intuition-gut-instin... )
One of my better stories was "Passenger Rescue" and "Passenger Rescue, Pt 2": http://www.taxiwars.org/2012/07/passenger-rescue.html / http://www....
I’d wave this away as metaphysical waffle if I also hadn’t had a few too many almost ordained seeming moments. Right place, right time sort of thing, what on earth are you doing in this cornfield miles from anywhere at 3am, never mind me?
So far, I've read only success stories. I think I can delve into reading similar stories. There a recommendation on this page - "Neither Dog Nor Wolf"; Maybe, I can start with that one.
Nope. The tears came for sure.
One teenage boy had just been thrown out of his house, with nothing other than a torn shirt and shorts, by his drunk father. I drove him to his girlfriend's place.
One desperate father had taken a bus as far as he could, but still had miles to walk to get to his mother's place and back home before his kids would wake up in the morning.
I wrote about those and my other recollections a while back[1], but none as memorable as this piece.
[1]: https://opposite-lock.com/topic/45077/hitchhikers-over-the-y...
Worst that happened to me was a very smelly drunk..
But overall hitchhikers are people just like you and me, the difference being they haven't got a car, obviously. I figure the worst that would happen is I'm robbed and my car stolen, which would stink but the risk is infinitesimal and the benefit I perceive in helping out my fellow human is worth it to me. Notably, I am male; my calculous would likely be different if I were female.
There's also the typical caveat of minding one's common sense & gut. If someone looks like a basket case I'm unlikely to pick them up, or if it's an odd hour/past dark, the area is remote etc. But someone on an busy onramp to I-40 during daytime, why not?
Yeah, he's swerving on the highway. He even let me know the RCMP were very serious about drunk driving. I offered to drive but he declined my offer.
It was the only time I saw the Northern Light in full spectacle — he pulled over for that. Blew my mind (although, at the same time, I was running on very little sleep).
This was back in the mid 1980's, I believe.
For me - I’m a 6’2” bearded dude. I drive a Jeep and almost never have the doors or top on it in the summer. I’m also armed and have had some training.
Being in an open vehicle means that anyone around me in traffic can see what’s going on, so I’m reasonably confident a hitchhiker isn’t going to try to take me hostage or directly threaten me with a weapon. It also couldn’t be any better ventilated, so I’m able to pick people up whose “odor” would others make it difficult to get a ride.
I’ve probably picked up 100 or more hitchhikers at this point. I’ve had a couple that were obviously unhinged, more than a few people who were drunk or stoned to the point they had no business in public, and a surprising number of people who I would have never expected to take me up on my offer of a ride.
One of my favorite memories of this is when I found myself in Charlottesville, VA at about 1am, wide awake, in a growing snowstorm with nothing to do. My Jeep didn’t have doors or a top even though it was ~10ºF out. There was a little over a foot of snow on the ground, and the city buses had stopped as a result. I ended up driving back and forth all over downtown as the bars closed, taking college kids back to their homes when I found them stumbling through the snow trying walk back.
I often wonder how many of them woke up the next day questioning their own sanity. “How did I get home last night? I remember walking, then got a ride in a Go-Kart… Wait a sec - was that Hagrid driving!?”
(assuming you're American; I am) I wonder if Europeans feel more at-ease about hitchhikers, or if there are any safety statistics.
I picked up some 50+ year old man with very long brown hair (down to his butt). He was definitely an outsider. Told me stories, how the FBI interrogated him once for having a book (I forget which one). How he used to work as a guard at the local jail, then as a cook at a castle-like hotel (both in the area). How his stress free life and eating local herbs/forest plants has prevented his hair from graying. Talked about his tiny, simple house with two rooms. He told me about American ginseng (illegal to harvest btw), and we pulled off the side of the road to find some. The plant made part of my lips swell a bit. Had that "lots of enzymes" flavor (like how peaches/strawberries/etc can tickle the inside of your mouth, but much stronger).
He said he had an wife in Kentucky that he hadn't finished divorcing, and then he asked me to drive him all the way back to Boston. He didn't even request to stop by his house. I let him out in downtown and he walked off into the night, presumably towards the airport.
Edit: oh yeah, i forgot that craziest part. He said people have been lnyched during his time living there. (Sorry if this is too dark, but all things considered, its hard to believe everything he said)
This is a food allergy. It's not "normal" for food to cause tingling or tickling.