Taxi driver
“So have you met a deaf person before in your line of work?” the man asked his rather large and pot-bellied friend as they were sitting at a table in a crowded pub. There were a large group of deaf people socialising and drinking at the bar which prompted the man to ask this question as he was intrigued.
“Oh yes, I have! I’ll never forget this one time I met a couple of deaf people” the pot-bellied friend replied. After all he was a taxi driver and he met people from all walks of life while driving them to their destinations.
“Please do tell.”
“Well it was a very bizarre experience. After that night I realised that deaf people are just people. They might have their own ways but they’re still the same as us lot.”
“What do you mean?” asked his friend.
“Well…” the man started to talk.
-
He was steaming drunk when he got into the taxi without waiting for his friend who was a couple of hundred meters behind and around the corner. His friend was also steaming drunk and didn’t have the capacity to keep up with him so it made sense that he was so far behind stumbling and making no sense at all. Maybe he didn’t realise that his friend was following him or thought he went back to the hostel.
The taxi driver didn’t expect to meet someone with a different mode of communication, so he was taken a bit aback when a deaf person entered his taxi and tried to communicate with his phone typing out words and gesturing. Even though the passenger was pretty drunk, he was still trying to make an effort to tell the taxi driver where he wanted to go. The taxi driver was clueless and felt hopeless so he just started to drive, and the longer he drove the further away they were from communicating with each other. The deaf guy didn’t really take notice of where he was going as he was assured that the taxi driver knew where he wanted to go so they went off away from the city and into the middle of nowhere before he noticed it.
Meanwhile his equally, if not drunker, friend stumbled and went around the corner. Only to find that no-one was there. In his drunken stupor he thought that was very strange but shrugged it off and turned back the way he came and into the bar that they were in previously. After attempting to order at the bar several times, he realised that it was closed. Or they refused to serve him due to the state he was in, we’ll never know. But he was desperate for a drink before going to bed in the hostel above the bar and he noticed a half-full pint of beer on an empty table that someone left behind and thought to himself that he’ll have that. So he strode across the bar room and picked it up, gulped it all in one go and sighed in pleasure. Except it didn’t taste quite right, there was a metallic after-taste to it.
He put the empty glass down and proceeded to exit the bar up the stairs when it started to hit him and oh! What a lift off! He was suddenly gurning, his pupils dilated to the maximum and his arms jerking violently as he felt a surge of energy going through him, his body temperature rising and his mind racing with thoughts. He was absolutely restless riding the intense high as it came over him.
And that was when he bumped into his friend with a stranger in the landing of the hostel, eyes wide open while his friend gasped and stared in disbelief back at him. The stranger awkward, not sure what to do except look at them, as they communicated in their language.
“Oh my god! What happened to you?!”
“I don’t know! Who’s this?!” He signed back jerkily, his arms uncontrollable and his face contorting and gurning.
“Erm, he’s a taxi driver. Can you help me?”
“What do you mean?!”
“I got in a taxi and somehow he drove me all the way out of the city before I realised it! And now I need to pay him £50” He sighed.
“Sure! No problem! Follow me!” He signed back full of energy and enthusiasm as he led them outside of the hostel and along the street jerking and twitching.
The taxi driver was staring in amazement, not quite believing what he was seeing as he reluctantly followed them. They arrived at a cash machine when the jerky guy proceeded to withdraw £50 and handed it to the taxi driver hugging him enthusiastically and smiling the widest wide-eyes smile as if he was a maniac. The taxi driver stood there frozen in fear as he accepted the money. And then they walked away leaving him alone to process the whole situation.
-
“I look back on that a lot and wonder why it happened. Maybe I misread his message on his phone when he got in the taxi but he was so drunk so I’m still not sure.” The taxi driver said as he sipped from his pint.
“So…you’re saying deaf people love to party and let loose?” his friend asked.
“Sure! I mean, look at the crowd over there. What do you think they’re doing right now?”
His friend looked up towards the deaf crowd and raised his eyebrows as to realise that it was obvious.
“Maybe if I knew a few signs then it could have been easier to communicate. But that was the first time I met deaf people so I didn’t realise. Now I know that they are just like us all. They like to have fun and enjoy life even if it means that sometimes they go overboard. That happens to everyone.” He spoke as he sipped his beer again.
He added “It’s like that William Blake poem, The Fly. Do you know it?”
“No” his friend replied.
“One of the verses goes like this ‘For I dance and drink and sing, till some blind hand shall brush my wing’. What the poem really means is that we are all equal in the face of death, no matter our differences or rather the appearance of difference.”
“I see. So you’re saying that we are deaf people then?”
“Yeah! You could put it like that” The taxi driver smiled and looked to the crowd, raised his pint towards them and smiled as they looked with perplexed faces and awkwardly raising their glasses back at him.