Into The Woods

Yesterday I officially embarked on my late life, two-pronged career as Uber driver and oral historian; listener to stories all day long.

This has indeed been an eye-opening week. It started with accompanying Santina to a Unitarian Universalist Church service on Sunday. I have long enjoyed claiming that my last non-Christmas church service was Easter 1958. I’m sure this isn’t true, but I do enjoy saying it. Perhaps I will continue to.

I went largely for the music which is directed by our fine neighbor, Milton Crotts. As the church swelled my discomfort grew, but it slowly dawned on me that the discomfort was not attributable so much to a deep seated dislike for religion (though I do confess to a deep seated disinterest), as to a minor(ish) condition of agoraphobia — which would be a fear of crowds; and not, as it sounds, a fear of agriculture. I have no fear of agriculture whatsoever. I’m quite fond of agriculture. I even like the feel of the word ag-ri-cul-ture as it pinballs out the mouth. It’s an old-fashioned word, like ‘dungarees’, which is what I called them growing up; and on the knees of mine you can usually find evidence of agriculture.

It also occurred to me during that service that if I am to promote my oral history work I will need to become involved with the larger society, of which the UU Church is a part. So a question arose as to whether I would actually stoop to use the church as a marketing tool! And indeed I would, but the fact is I met some very nice people there. People I’d be delighted to talk with over a cup of tea. People with stories that run both parallel and perpendicular to my own.

With this fuzzy feeling of potential change, I approached the troubled waters of setting out on my first Uber drive. The largest complaint from Uber riders concerns drivers who don’t know their way around their city. And I don’t. So procrastination was actually in order. But at some point you simply have to trust. Like falling backward off a ladder into the supporting arms of friends — an exercise I participated in without qualm some 30 years ago.

Fortunately my first rider, a young man, local teacher, was fully prepared to provide turn by turn back road instructions to a distant destination. For his efforts — and for having been my first rider — he was presented with a freshly baked loaf of bread, which took him, I am quite certain, by surprise.

My second ride was a group of four young medical people from Washington DC who were headed downtown for a wedding reception. Somewhere south of the city they all piled into my Matrix (I didn’t dare look), and we arrived safe and sound after a few more lefts and rights than absolutely necessary.

So, here we go, into the woods.