I had a ride earlier this year that terrified me and tested my temper. The pick-up was in Massapequa, NY at 4:00am. I was 15 minutes early, as I usually am. A woman in her 50s came outside and told me she needed me to load up the Cadillac Escalade I was driving with her mother’s worldly possessions. Of course I complied.
After the SUV was loaded up, a 93-year-old woman and her 60-year-old son came outside and got into the SUV. I loaded her walker into the vehicle as well.
We left the small house behind us with the loaded-up SUV, on our way to Charlottesville, VA, where I learned the woman and the son were going to move all of their worldly possessions and start a new life… or at least a new chapter in the life they had.
The ride was uneventful as we drove through six states – from New York to New Jersey to Maryland to Delaware to Pennsylvania to Virginia – to get to our ultimate destination. As we passed the border into Virginia, the woman seemed to be excited. As we plowed further into Virginia, she started to become anxious, speaking rapidly and asking me and her son a lot of questions.
Finally, we passed the sign that read: “Welcome to Charlottesville, Virginia.” The woman cheered, saying, “Yay, we are finally here!”
About five minutes later, we turned off the main street and drove on a long dirt road to nowhere. The woman started to panic, asking, “Where are we going? I thought we were going to Charlottesville, Virginia!” I explained that yes, we did pass through Charlottesville, but the map is taking me outside the small city limits.
The further we traveled away from the city limits and deeper into the desolate “Deliverance” dirt road, the woman started to cry and began screaming at her son. She said, “What are you doing to me? You are going abandon me here!”
Her son tried to calm her down and said everything was going to be fine. She argued that it wasn’t, and she wanted me to turn around and drive her back to Massapequa, NY.
Her son then said something that broke my heart and caused me to panic. He said, “We can’t go back because your daughter, my sister, doesn’t want you back with her.”
We finally arrived at the house, a quaint little log cabin on the top of a muddy mountain. We got out of the SUV and went inside the house. It looked fine to me, but the bathroom was not acceptable to her because it was not equipped for a handicapped person.
At this point, the woman was wailing. She turned to me, grabbed both my arms and screamed, “Please don’t abandon me here! I don’t want to be here. Please don’t leave me here.”
Then the woman turned to her son and started screaming and cursing at him saying, “You are responsible for this horrible situation. How could you abandon me here in the middle of nowhere, many miles from town?” Her son did not have much of an answer.
I said to the woman I would be happy to drive her into town, where she could stay at a hotel where she would feel safe and comfortable. She thanked me with tears in her eyes and thanked me for understanding how she felt.
Then I drove her and her son into Charlottesville, where we found a hotel she said was acceptable. I made sure to unload the SUV with all of her belongings in her hotel room.
As I said goodbye to the woman and her son, she thanked me for being her steady rock and making her feel safe. She did not tip me, but I felt like she was comfortable, safe and happy. That was enough for me.
The moral of this Street Story is simply this: As a chauffeur, your job is not only to drive your passenger safely to their destination. Sometimes you need to calm them down when they are anxious and do everything you can to reassure them that everything is OK.
