It was one of the coldest days in January. I called an Uber right before my phone froze to death, so I waited, hoping the Uber driver would noticed me standing alone in the middle of nothing but piling snow. “I couldn’t contact you,” he spoke with an Uber driver’s heavy foreign accent, “so I drove around and around, look for people who looks like she’s waiting for a Uber.” He drove for more than 5 minutes before he found me.
I thanked him for not canceling the order. “You wouldn’t want me to cancel the order in this weather.” He said, stammering.
Stereotyped Uber drivers seem to be immigrants from every corner outside this country. They seem to at first stumble into the bottom of this society with poor fluency in English, no other expertise, a pocket of cash and outdated American dream floating on the top of their minds. But after a year or two struggling to communicate with their costumers, their spoken English—although most of the sentences still consist of simple grammar and stammers—always improve significantly.
These Uber drivers, surprisingly nearly all of them, seem to be chatty by nature. They always beg for a share of your attention from your phone. When they start pouring out their stories, from about their crumpled and sometimes terribly tanned skin to about a bump on their cars, sometimes about their lives before their journey to the US and after.
“You people don’t appreciate what you have now,” this driver began his story telling with this sentence. He was expecting for my full attention, so I took off my earbuds.
“My parents are from Thailand. Where I was born in this country, you don’t want to go.” He took a second to glance at me, making sure that I was all ears.
It was Sacramento, California, a big city of which I’ve heard only its title of the capital city of this well-developed west coast state. “No, you don’t want to go there, it is a bad neighborhood,” he shook his head while recalling his childhood memories, “it is hell.”
I was not sure why he wanted to speak of these painful memories, but he was excited, clenching on the steering wheel so hard his knuckles whitened. “There were many many gangs, you have to join one to survive,” he said, “otherwise you are going to be beat to death.”
“I joined one, because I needed to live. Everybody has to join one. Even girls have girls’ gang.” He said. “I can’t count how many times I was beaten.”
“We have to declare colors. If you walk into Green’s territory wearing all blue, you are gonna get beaten, no questions asked.” No matter if one’s in the Blue gang or not.
He lived downtown in an Asian neighborhood—drug dealing, theft, robs and gun fights were common scenes around that area. “The minute I had a chance, I got outta there,” he said, “I can’t let my children live in that society.” He travelled all the way across the country and ended up in this quiet mountain region where people smile and greet to strangers.
“If I had stayed there, I would’ve been dead by now.” He spoke out this sentence with curiously correct grammar and fluency, like he had rehearsed it thousands of times.
“So you see, people here live too peacefully they don’t appreciate how peaceful their lives are. They are always complaining.” He took his eyes off the road and glanced at me again. I was not sure if that glance was admonishing me for being among the ungrateful or was seeking my approval of his philosophy. I hurriedly nodded, not saying a word.
“Believe it or not, my dad had 22 children.” He continued recounting his life. “Two wives, 22 children. Some of them died at war. Now we have 19 left.”
“One of my brothers was kicked outta the house by my father, because he was going to marry a singer that my father thought was too slutty. He was captured by Thailand’s government army and was given two choices: be killed as a spy or join the army.
“I know of this story because my uncle followed him as he was kicked out of the family. He didn’t want him to die, but they both ended up in the army.
“My brother had this illness of being shaky all the time. One day he was shot by his captain because he could not stand still.” He said that with incredible composure. “It was during wartime, people get shot everyday.”
I assumed that, having that amount siblings diluted the intensity of their attachment to one another, so their death didn’t strike him badly.
But then he told me: “I sometimes have bad dreams. Sometimes I dream of myself being killed.”
That sentence came out calmly, too, but I realized that these, in fact, have profound impact on his life, much more than it was revealed in his tone.
He didn’t finish his talk because we’ve reached out destiny. But he looked relaxed. “Thanks for listening to me talking,” he said. “I’m Kevin, by the way.”
“Thanks for talking.” I replied, and put my earbuds back on.
