Uber

I’m in an Uber at six-thirty in the morning, asking my driver questions. He works ten hours a day. He has two children. He was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to America when he was ~30. He’s been doing Uber for a year and a half.

“What’s your dream job?” I ask him.

“My…my dream job?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I play softball a lot with a bunch of these nice guys, and they’re on the police force. I’d like to be a policeman.”

“Why?”

“I want to protect people.”

I smile at that.

“What about you? What’s your dream job?”

I stare out the window. “I don’t know. I’m going to go to college soon, and I hope to find out.”

I think about all the Ubers I’ve had over the years — dozens, maybe hundreds of them, in multiple states. Some conversations stick out to me — that time I compared religions with a Christian driver, the time I got a really nice driver in St. Louis, the first time I got a female driver after a year of constant Ubering. My conversation with a driver who’d moved to America from Germany just to learn English, and was planning to move back again once he became fluent. A driver with his daughter in the car who drove for the conversation and not for the money. People born in different states and countries, people who came to America hoping for something better. Laughter. Interesting conversation. Rarely, a driver I didn’t like.