Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: This Again?!

Episode 8 in a series of true rideshare stories

(NOTE: For those who haven’t noticed, I’ve begun recording audio versions of these posts which you can hear by using the player at the top of this post. There are also video versions available on my YouTube channel)

She staggers out of the bar and up to the car asking, "Is this for Haley?" and when I tell her it is, she gets in, going, "Oh good. I never go out. I'm sorry."

I say, "Uh... no problem."

"I'm sorry."

Ah, I see. One of the sorry drunks. I ask her how her night was.

"It was okay. I never go out, so I don't know. I just want to go home. I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for."

"Sorry."

A minute later she can't figure out where I'm going. I read the address to her and she says it's right. I tell her that's where we're going. She says okay.

She suddenly can't find her keys and starts freaking out, taking off her seatbelt so she can—I don't know—look through her purse more frantically? She spends about two minutes crying and ripping her purse apart, then finds her keys and calms down immediately like a baby being handed back her favorite toy.

Mercifully, she passes out for the rest of the ride.

I get to the apartment and ask her which building we're looking for. She doesn't seem to understand.

"This is your apartment complex, right?"

"..."

"Is this your address, or do we need to go somewhere else?"

"This is my apartment."

"This one?"

"This is my apartment."

"Okay."

She sits there for about ten seconds without moving.

"So we're here then, right?"

"This is my apartment."

"Okay. ...So are you going to go into your apartment?"

"..."

"We're here, right? So you're going to get out now and go into your apartment?"

With much concentration, she seems to at last process what I'm telling her. Namely, that we have arrived. Finally piecing it together, in perfectly slurred Drunklish, she says, "Oh no, THIS happened??" as though it's been a prior occurrence and is always a nuisance.

With that, she gets out and wobbles to her door, barely staying vertical on the way there.

But "Oh no, THIS happened??" stays with me, for a screenplay or an acting gig or even a future drunken mishap of my own, because it pretty much epitomizes a certain aspect of the drunken experience.

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Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is a series that tells true stories of my 10,000+ trips as a rideshare driver. I will post them every Monday.