It’s Sunday afternoon, and Jimmy is dancing drunk in the slow direction of my car. The coordination of the eyes of his hands is heavily compromised. He didn’t even wear a face mask.
I am a lift driver and sent him here to collect it from Hillsboro, Hillsboro Bar and Grill in Reg Regan. And no one comes into my car without a mask.
Jimmy surprised me by opening the front door and pushing the seat next to me. It smells like one of the bars where many, many cigarettes were drunk at one time. I don’t want it in my car. But I take my second job as a lift driver seriously. I give it a chance.
“You’ll wear a mask,” I say. “And not in the front seat. You have to come back, and you have to wear a mask. “I’m taking another stand against these unmeasured men (and women) who want to run me.
Jimmy tries to say something, which means he seems to have a mask – somewhere. He puts his right hand in the pocket of his right shirt and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. And then – I haven’t seen this before – he puts the pack on his face, where the mask will go. He has been armed, and has now mistakenly intended to put it over his mouth for a face mask. It reaches the back door of my car, the passenger side handle. “It’s not a mask,” I say. “It’s a pack of cigarettes. No masks, no rides. ”
Jimmy looks confused and says something I don’t understand. It indicates that he will find a mask in the bar. I can’t wait to come out with the pint glass pressed to her face. After indicating in the application that the ride refused to don the mask, I will cancel the ride and depart.
Spending half an hour of my life I get 71 4.71 and cool rest.
Most of my passengers wear masks by default. Who do not fall into the three categories. Most often, they are either drunk as skunk or they are anti-masks. The third category of riders wears their children’s masks, which I only see if I look in the mirror in the rear view and see their snores in front of me like a second set of eyes. I ask them to cover their noses as well as their mouths, but it’s frustrating: their masks are just too small.
Drunk is the assumption. They are the gymnasts of the world. But the anti-mask makes me cringe. They want to talk to pseudoscience, tell me the epidemic is an hoax, and as weird as they talk.
Take Zack.
I arrived at Reg Reagan’s Trotdale to pick up Zack on a cold Sunday night. His request includes a lengthy note about how to better pick him up at a very specific location by the pool in his apartment apartment complex or he will be late for work.
I find him wearing speedo briefs and a t-shirt, and he makes the sound of patchouli oil. He is not wearing a mask.
Before I can speak he says, “You probably want to wear my mask.” He tries to get in the car, and I tell him he has to wear a mask. I make a mistake referring to Kovid. She is ready for me. He’s going to rent an anti-mask in the freezing cold, at a speedo. He lectured me on the “temptation of the left media” and then conveyed the feeling of the mind to the statistics and what that pseudo viral sequencing data looks like. I learned not to respond to these riders without saying, “No masks, no rides.”
Zack says he won’t just wear a mask to ride in a car, and he’s really working that I’ll make him late for work because I’ve been picked up by the left media. Really, I hate the smell of patchouli oil and almost get out.
But then he sticks his hand inside his speedo and pulls out a disposable face mask. Now I have to listen to him for 10 minutes from the back seat of his car. Listen to its virus-as-hawks tirade associated with the demand for speeding or it will be too late to move to the formidable Amazon facility. I can’t help but ask if Amazon needs a mask. (I know they do.) He says, “It doesn’t matter. “Twenty-six workers tested positive and came back in three weeks. It’s no worse than the flu. “
I thank him for getting out of my car. Then, fed up with the smell and all, I spray the sanitizer on my back seat and drive fast with the windows open for 10 minutes before picking up the other passengers.
I build a bridge at Portland Airport. He is a mechanical engineer back in town after a conference. When I go to his home in Wilsonville, Reg Regan, he says the smell comes from my car. I can’t help but tell her about the guy who was just 30 minutes ago Speedo and all that where she is sitting now. He laughs.
I tell her I want to check: People like Zack are not normal, right? Is the epidemic real? I’m not crazy, right? Sometimes this morning I wonder if I’m crazy. Bridget acknowledges my feelings, assuring me that, no, I’m not crazy. What I just saw was not normal. And elevator and Uber drivers and juvenile grocery store clerks should not be put in a position to polish masks during an epidemic.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be talking about Zack with passengers wearing my masks. There is a consensus that there should be a federal order to put on a mask whenever you go out of your home. I admit to asking leading questions, but many of my passengers are “essential” workers who receive the mask thing, and are very aware that the epidemic is no betrayal. I suggest that we call our elected representatives and tell them that we want people to wear masks. To protect us.
A few nights later, I took Jin to Winko, not far from where I left Jimmy. Juan has included a note with his ride request. He wants to let me know that he is blind, dressed in green, and please look for him.
It’s easy to see. Neon-green rain jacket, a cane – and he’s wearing a mask and rubber gloves. Instead of helping him deliver his groceries home in the rain, he says, the other two drivers pulled him over. He apologizes. I tell him he has nothing to regret. I put on my gloves and loaded his groceries into my trunk. I help him get in my car. It’s only a three-minute ride to get to his house, but who would leave a blind man with a cart full of groceries standing in the rain?
I ask a fellow lift driver named Justin about it all. I’m running it towards a bar. “Yes,” he says, “the mask sucks the thing.” He says he has to drive every night from the Portland Strip Club to Van Knocker, Washington and Washington to the home of Drinks, where he then gets more drunk and takes them back to Portland. He does this every night back and forth until he gets more drunk to drive. That is against the mask command. “I need a ride. I don’t have time to deal with it, “he says.
But I do. Wear your masks, and wear them properly. And get what is right. I want to see Zack’s speed as much as I want to see your snoring.
The author is a writer based in Portland, Reg Reagan. Passengers’ names have been changed to protect their privacy
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