Taxi Driver

Sorry guys...this turned out to be a lot longer than I anticipated. It may warrant two sittings!

I remember a few years ago, Rob and I having a discussion about our careers. At the time I had just been promoted to manager of the gym I was working at and as a result my salary almost quadrupled. It was a great time for me. My self esteem went through the roof for a few weeks as I came to terms with the knowledge that I was actually capable of achieving far more in my working life than I ever believed possible. In my early twenties I’d had fantasies of becoming a high flying career woman and had envisaged business suits bulging in my wardrobe, a briefcase overflowing with paperwork, lengthy meetings over a couple of G and T’s in the local wine bar and a mobile phone bursting with contacts. Of course it was all a dream; there was no way in this world I’d be offered such a position seeing as I was pretty much uneducated (in terms of qualifications) and incapable of running up the stairs, let alone running a business.

I think during those first few weeks in my new (and completely unexpected) role, Rob envisaged the same things I had and it threatened the dynamic of our relationship in more ways than I thought possible. I can remember one day early on in the job, I waltzed into the house undoubtedly feeling and looking two feet taller than I actually was. It was at a time when Rob was struggling with the emergence of this new and unfamiliar woman he was married to, and he suddenly turned to me in the middle of an argument and said: “You’re a manager! And I’m just a bloody taxi driver.”

Rob’s comment: “I’m just a taxi driver” really upset me. We discussed it a lot and talked about what he really meant when he said it. It wasn’t the salary aspect…he was still earning more money than I was. So what had threatened him or upset him? He reached the conclusion that he felt his job was mundane– one which anybody with a driving license could do - a job which other people rarely respect or admire. It was just a job for the ‘academically challenged’. It hurt me to think he was feeling that way because I never saw him or his job in that way. And although he thought I had a more important position than him, he was wrong. I realised pretty quickly that all my illusions of what being in management would entail were bullshit. It was a shit job in which I got very little respect and zero sense of fulfilment.

So…what prompted me to write all of this today? Well, I was sitting here going through my daily ritual of clicking through my blogroll when I came across this blog entry, written by Crystal Jigsaw. The lovely Crystal has a daughter, Amy, who is autistic. I discovered today that Amy has a taxi to school and back, and I immediately thought of Rob and the job he does.

Rob does his fair share of carting drunken people from one pub to another, business people from one venue to another, alcoholics from house to corner shop and back again, and old ladies to the supermarket. But he also does far, far more than that.

Once, Rob picked up a guy from his house and took him to the pub and then a few hours later picked him up from the pub and took him back home again. The next time the guy called for a taxi he specifically asked for Rob and before long a routine developed where Rob became his only driver. The man, Mike, had cancer of the throat and was slowly dying. He lived alone. Stupid as it may be to still be drinking with throat cancer, who are we to judge? And I use the word ‘drinking’ very loosely because the poor guy couldn’t even drink or eat…but he could shoot a whisky through his feeding tube in his stomach and taste it in his throat when he belched. They developed a friendship which only existed within the confines of the taxi, but where for a few minutes every day they talked about our home town, the people and places within it, their love of the local football team and Mike’s illness. I doubt that Mike ever had a clue about the impact he was having on his taxi driver though. Once - on Christmas Day when Rob wasn’t working - Rob organised for another driver to pick Mike up and take him to the pub, but paid the driver himself. Another Christmas, Rob declined a drink at lunchtime when we were in the middle of a family gathering. I was surprised and asked him why. He told me he’d arranged to get Mike from the pub – not in a taxi but in his own car, with no fee.

Mike passed away last year and I know Rob found it hard because he never really got the chance to say goodbye, or to tell him how much knowing him had meant to him.

Getting back to Crystal’s blog entry about the mention of Amy’s taxi driver…

It’s a big part of Rob’s job. He picks up two, three, sometimes four children and takes them to school – sometimes with an escort, sometimes without. And then at the end of the day he picks them up from school and takes them home again. The children are all vulnerable with either physical, emotional or mental disabilities, and most have behavioural problems. I guess if three or four hours of your working day is spent with these children, it’s hard to not get attached in some way. He’s in a difficult situation though – there are very strict guidelines he has to adhere to, and crossing that line could result in him losing his job. The simple act of offering a child some sweets could end in disaster, and he’s well aware of it because a few times he has come close to crossing that line. But over time he has learned to work within the confines of the law while still making the children feel special and important. Because they are.

When you have three or four children in your car – each with their own (often very serious) problems – it must be extremely difficult to bring about a sense of normality and decorum within it, let alone attempt to drive at the same time. Even when there is an escort, with very little training they often struggle to control some situations which can really easily spiral into mayhem. Each child comes with a file which lists particular behavioural and health problems the escort needs to be aware of but as it’s confidential, Rob isn’t given access to the files. However he quickly learns which child may be likely to attempt opening the door while the car is still moving, which one will become agitated if he doesn’t receive enough attention, which one is likely to whack him over the head with his lunchbox and which one will start repetitively licking the windows. Rob has this ability to control situations with the tone of his voice and with his choice of words – and to gain respect through communication. It sounds simple enough, but I don’t think we all have it in us. I certainly don’t. His ability to distract them and engage them in something else is amazing.

He does other stuff too, to make their journeys more harmonious and fun. For instance, he’ll let them take it in turns sitting in the front seat instead of the back, and they get that privilege taken away from them if they’re being deliberately unruly. He lets them each bring a CD to school with them to play on the journey, again taking it in turns, day after day. He teaches them patience and understanding. He teaches them that even if they don’t like the music which is playing, someone else does and they need to be tolerant of that. They learn that each of them is different - that they all have a place in this world and they can’t always come first. He teaches them that if it’s someone else’s turn today, their turn will come tomorrow. They obviously get so excited when it’s ‘their’ turn, yet as the routine develops they’re equally as happy to announce to Rob “it’s Jamie’s turn today, isn’t it?” and then get congratulated for remembering.

Not all of the children live at home with their parents…some of them are in care homes. Over time Rob gets to know some of the parents and carers of these children. He has been touched many times when a child has handed him a birthday or Christmas card, or when a parent has invited him into the house for a piece of cake and a cup of tea on the child’s birthday. He seems to become an integral part of their lives, and they his. Many times he has been here wrapping a little present for each of them at Christmas, or choosing Easter Eggs or presents he thinks they will like – all with their parent’s blessing, of course. It can't be any other way. It's never a case of picking up any old egg on the shelf, and it can become quite an expedition when you have to consider their nut allergies, their intolerance to E numbers and so on. So many of them have 'trigger foods' which must be avoided at all costs, and of course he can't give one child a big egg and another child a small egg, can he? It all has to be weighed up and sorted out.

He had one group of kids for almost three years and saw them shoot from waist high to shoulder high. If one of the boys won a football match at school, Rob was as happy for them as he would have been if they were his own sons. He shared their triumphs on school sports days and report days, their fears on exam days, their tears when their pets ran away or died. He watched them all grow. He has a stack of pictures and cards they made for him. Unfortunaely he never got to say goodbye to them because in their last term at school, the council gave the run to another taxi firm. Turning up on the doorstep and saying “um…I used to be your son’s taxi driver….” sounds a bit too weird. So he just moved on. He thinks about them often, though.

If there’s any doubt about the effect someone - who initially appears to be insignificant - can have on a child’s life, I think this next story dispels it.

There was one girl who had very severe physical and mental disabilities. At a guess, I’d say she had cerebral palsy and as a result she had to be carried to the car by her carers and strapped in, most times with a struggle. Her speech was practically non existent…she only ever spoke one or two words. One day the carers came to the car and told Rob that they were having difficulty getting her to co-operate, so could he wait a few more minutes while they tried to calm her down. She was apparently thrashing around on the floor, completely unwilling to respond to them. So Rob got out of the car, went inside, crouched down beside her and spoke to her. “You remember me,” he said. “I’m Rob.” The carers watched as she focused on him. He continued to talk to her, soothing her, and then just scooped her up in his arms and carried her out to the car. When they got back from school that day, and as Rob was about to drive off, she turned in her wheelchair and waved her arm at him. “Wob!” she said. It was the first man's name she had ever spoken. She was fourteen.

School term started a few weeks ago and Rob has yet another school run with three different children. He was warned at the beginning that one of the girls will not tolerate any terms of endearment, so he erased the word ‘sweetheart’ from his vocabulary. Yesterday, he pulled up outside her house, helped her out of the car, passed her the schoolbag, and she happily skipped up the path.

“Bye Rob! She said.

“See ya mate!” he said.

And with that she swung round, threw her schoolbag on the floor, put her hands on her hips and yelled at the top of her voice “I AM NOT YOUR MATE.”

I smiled when he told me that because if I know Rob, there will come a day when I know she’ll let him say it.

This turned out to be a lot longer than I expected it to be.

I guess what I really wanted to say was that Rob will never, ever be ‘just a taxi driver’. At least, not in my eyes.