Best Driver

Joe and I have taken a lot of cabs in our time here in Korea; they're incredibly cheap, clean, and the lazy (wo)man's best friend. With all this cab taking comes a colorful array of cab drivers. Of all the times we've taken cabs, only one cab driver has ever been a woman--she was particularly bubbly and sweet. The rest have been men of various ages, all with the requisite (dyed) black hair and all fairly stoic. But they each do have their certain behavioral differences. Like the one guy who totally ignored our hand gestures and loud attempts at the Korean words for "go right now" and turned wherever he felt like. Or like the one who ignored all traffic lights and got us home from E-mart in under two minutes. Or the one whose cab smelled of root and musty earth. Or the one who chuckled at my pronunciation of subway station. Or the one who sucked his teeth in disgust at my pronunciation of subway station. Or the one who pulled over in the middle of traffic to ask anotehr cabbie where the hell he was taking us and how to get there.

Last night, we got a real gem. He was an older guy. His old-man's nose reminded me a lot of my Grandpa Markussen. He seemed a little confused at first when two "waygooks" (foreigners) got in the car. Now that I can say the name of my school near our house in Korean, we've stopped using the pre-printed address card that one of my co-teachers wrote out for us. Most times I'm understood. This time, we had a little difficulty, but once the old cab driver understood my mangled Korean, we were off. And immediately the man started speaking in very broken English. First he stated (not asked) that we were from the USA. We nodded. Then: Do you speak Japanese? When we said no, there was a flash of disappointment that crossed over his face. It passed, and he told us that "Japan is number 1!!" We laughed. Then he started teaching us how to say hello in as many languages as he knew. He might also have been trying to teach us the word for "hat" in those same languages, because he kept sweeping his hand over his thinning hair and repeating words. We'll never know. He went through Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Malay, and possibly Chinese or Tamil because he kept saying Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. He chuckled a lot the whole way to our apartment, even when he tried to ignore our "go right here" shpiel, slammed on his breaks, and nearly hit another car. He kept smiling through the multitude of honks from angry drivers behind us as he slowly backed up through the main street and turned the car where we asked. He pointed to his chest and said solemnly, but with a sense of self-deprecation, "Best driver." What with the language lesson and the calm way he dealt with a near-accident, we kind of had to agree. We said goodbye and thank you in Korean, got out of the cab and then, because habits die hard and a conversation feels unfinished to me unless I say it, said "Bye" in English. He replied "bye, bye" with a friendly smile and drove off.