I have to admit it. I have been driving for Uber. I, like many who are doing the same, need the extra money, and can’t manage any other way. I wanted to work in a grocery store, or something else where I could put in regular hours and make at least minimum wage to supplement my shrinking pension income. But my health is not sound enough to hold a job where I have to work every day for a set number of hours. I am only well enough to work about ten hours a week, and then only when my arthritis isn’t crippling me, my diabetes isn’t making me stupid, and other factors aren’t overwhelming me with upset stomach, psoriatic itchiness making me scratch myself bloody in all the wrong places, or having trouble simply getting enough oxygen to stay among the living. Uber works for me because I can go do it any time day or night that I feel well enough to do it. But the job involves a bit of craziness along the way.
One thing that makes it crazy is the way Uber drivers have, as a group, developed a somewhat sketchy identity. Sure, they sometimes aid superhero actors who play Doctor Strange and Sherlock Holmes in saving people from attackers (You know, that Bandersnatch Cummerbund guy). But they also get tried for raping or robbing passengers. They get into bizarre accidents and shoot their passengers. How do you convince the female passenger that it is safe to trust you despite the scruffy beard and homeless guy ambiance you are stuck with due to poor health? Certainly you are aware that you look like a serial killer, right?
And back-seat drivers all have visions of the bloody, fiery car crash you are going to put them through in return for their $5.00 riding fee.
But given a chance, I can drive like a master. I had a daily commute that was 30 miles long (45 stop lights) one way that I spent hours practicing on before and after school for a total of 4 hours a day for 180 days a year for a space of 7 years. Passengers have gasped when they see the threats coming at us from two lanes over at twenty-miles-an-hour-faster-than-the-speed-limit, but breathe a sigh of relief when I avoid the impact by several feet. I watch twenty things at once in Dallas-area traffic.
Lately though, I have been limiting myself to food deliveries. I have a car that. due to a faulty heat sensor that has defied recall repair three times, constantly thinks it is suffering from engine overheating, so that, in order to keep going, I must roll down the windows and put the heater on full blast. That doesn’t sit well with passengers in Texas heat. But it means I must endure a high-speed Easy-Bake Oven ride while driving. And today, when I parked at the main office of the apartment complex and walked the meal to the appropriate apartment, which was as it always is, on the far side of the entire complex, I got locked inside. I couldn’t get back out through any of the security gates because I didn’t have a car to activate the pressure plates at the exit. And the Spanish-speaking maintenance man who let me in the place was nowhere around to let me out again. And the next meal delivery was waiting for me to pick it up at Taco Bueno, not getting any warmer while it sat on the counter. I had to squeeze my jelly belly through the narrow opening between the two sides of the security gate. This I was able to successfully do only probably because the mad dash through the hot sidewalks of the apartment complex had lost me just enough weight to make it.
Given the option, I would really rather still be teaching. Uber driving is a crazy way to make money. But we do what we can actually do in life, and at least I get a funny story or two to tell about later… if I manage to survive the next Uber drive.
You may not be able to rescue other people’s minds from being stupid. But what you can do and be artful about is… make them laugh.
Catch a Falling Star 
Facebooking and Birdwalking
This is my bird-walking illustration. I know that it is totally the wrong picture for the job, but it is a bird walking, isn’t it.
It is not a stretch to suggest that most of what you find on Facebook is not real. Especially when it comes to the endless posting and sharing of topical political memes. I had thought when Facebook came out with their reaction-emoji thingies, that there was at least one I would never find a use for.
Boy! Was I ever wrong about that. Now that the gold-plated pumpkinhead that got himself elected somehow is busy with his markers and crayons making executive orders, it is about the only one that really fits anywhere.
We made a big mistake allowing Trump to play Prexy and be the one in charge of making the rules of the game. You all knew he was gonna cheat before the game even started, didn’t you? And it won’t last long. He is making allies like Australia into offended enemies. He is banning burn victims, heroic Iraqi translators, doctors, and researchers from coming into the country with their entry visas and green cards and other proof that they have a right to be here. He is burning up any goodwill and patience and level-headedness that we have tried to afford him. He will be impeached, or worse, sooner rather than later. And then we will have to live with the irreparable damage he has done.
And we probably deserve it. We have made mistakes before, and if we live long enough, we will make more in the future. But this was a big one. And I don’t have to feel happy about it. No matter what my conservative friends on Facebook tell me… or what names they call me.
So that’s where the bird-walking comes in. The mind has to wander away down paths of lesser resistance. We need to go where the sandpiper would go, walking down the beach to look for new and interesting-looking seeds to eat.
You really should add this to your Bob Ross Bible if you haven’t already.
All of my illustrations in this article, except for the walking bird, which I drew myself, are clipped directly from Facebook. Facebook is sometimes the soul source of wisdom for Village Idiots, and I should probably make an effort to be one less of the time. But it is also an excellent source of bird-walking topics that get my mind off the terrible things and onto free-floating tangents that take me to places my mind would really rather be.
I would’ve liked to have attended Pillsbury’s funeral, but the meme only gave the time and length of the service, not the date. I fear that by now I have missed it. But I am sure the service was well done.
Nostalgia memes on Facebook are great. They make me feel all squishy and sad again about the times long gone and how terrifyingly horrible they were compared to how terrible they are now.
Remember John Wayne Gacy? Or reports on television about the Viet Nam War? With pictures? Full color pictures of the My Lai Massacre in living color on NBC, with all the blood in bright red. Yeah, that stuff on TV kept us outdoors quite a lot.
But Facebook bird-walking is a dangerous sport. If you let it, it will eat up your whole life, minute by minute, hour by hour. And I’m not sure it makes you smarter in any way. I know some pretty stupid people who are on Facebook quite a lot.
Bird-walking at its best, though, is to coddiwomple. And though you don’t know where you are going, you will get there sooner or later, so you might as well look at the scenery and appreciate the irony along the way. Life should be a leisurely stroll, not a rush to get away from gold-plated pumpinheads with executive orders in their tiny, tiny hands.
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Filed under angry rant, battling depression, clowns, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, humor, irony, memes, Paffooney
Tagged as bird walking, Facebook, politics