taxi, taxi!

I was speaking with a friend earlier who happened to be taking a taxi to the airport. No big deal there--happens all the time, makes sense in big cities. As so much often does these days, however, the conversation reminded me of growing up in Manila. "taxi," I thought. "hmmm. We used to take taxis a lot, both in Quezon City and in Makati." And I remembered them: usually a Toyota Corolla, Isuzu Gemini, or a Mitsubishi Lancer. Usually quite old, without "aircon," as the taxis in the picture I found (after an approx. 3-min. GIS) advertise. The back seat of our taxi was usually completely caved in; the suspension was nonexistent, the tires bald, the alignment off, the instruments inoperative. But there was a shrine to the Blessed Virgin, multiple varieties of car air freshener (there was one product that was evidently quite popular; it was called "Going Steady," and it looked like an itty bitty can of Ajax powder), and the "driver's prayer" hanging from the rear-view mirror (if there was one).

Mom would hop in and, though the driver always wanted to know our final destination, she would just say "deretso," which means, "go ahead--straight!" She spoke tagalog with such fluency and authority, they were usually pretty taken aback. I reflect that she went grocery shopping with two kids in tow, using a taxi to get back & forth, schlepping all those Makati Supermarket bags into the trunk . . . wow. It wasn't a big deal to us at the time, and I guess it's not really a big deal at all. It's just not the way things get done in West Tennessee. Or Chapel Hill. Or Birmingham.

Some friends and I got totally bilked one time by a clever taxi driver. We were needing to get to the LRT station a few miles away from where we lived. We hailed a really nice looking taxi, and as we got in, the driver offered us some of the green mango (om nom nom) he was eating. Deftly done, because that distracted us from the fact that he hadn't reset the meter. Well, we payed about four times what it should have cost--we were clearly 'kano teenagers, what the hell were we going to do about it? I still chuckle when I think about what rubes we probably looked like. Me in my long hair and all.

No lessons. It's just fun to remember.