Archive Columns: City Living

A Modest Taxi Proposal

    In an effort to promote the commonweal and boost civic morale, I should like to propose that it become permissible for the ordinary citizen to strangle cab drivers when certain conditions obtain.

    If, for example, you are driving peacefully down Pine Street with a song in your heart and a shine on your shoes, whereupon a taxi cab in front of you stops in the middle of the only lane of moving traffic to pick up or drop off a fare instead of pulling over nine feet into the vast, vacant parking lane, it shall be permissible to strang le the driver of the cab.

    If a cab driver, upon exercising the above manoeuver, manages to block both Pine Street and the numbered street crossing it, it shall be permissible to strangle the cab driver twice, or to strangle him once and earn one strangling credit to be used at your discretion for situations not expressly stated.

    Similarly, if you should be a pedestrian strolling up, say, Spruce Street, with your worries on the doorstep and your thou ghts perhaps upon your swain or your shepherdess and you become aware of a persistent beep beep beep, and if you should then turn to find a cab driver who, by virtue of your existence on the sidewalk, imagines you must be in need of his services, it will be permissible for you to stop the cab, rip out its horn and strangle the driver.  While doing this, you are permitted, but not obliged, to tell the driver that if you had wanted a cab, you would have given the customary wave.

    If the radio is playing in a taxi you are riding without your having said: "Would you kindly turn on the radio?" strangling will be countenanced.

    If, after saying good morning, afternoon or evening, as the case may be, and stating your destination, and then exchanging the u sual bromides about the weather if necessary, if after these civilities an idiotic conversation should ensue, strangling may be employed to shorten it.  An idiotic conversation is defined as one that has not been initiated by you or your fellow passengers.

    If the driver has failed to learn that the even numbered addresses are on the south and west sides of the streets, and the odds on the opposite sides - this failure evidenced by his request to know which side of the street to drop you after you have repeatedly told him your address -  alas you may not strangle him but you may round down your fare to the even or odd integer that most suits you.

    Finally, if, upon completion of the trip, you hand the cab driver a 20 dollar bill and he looks at you as though you had handed him a bank draft from the East India Company, as though you had not offered the smallest bill available from most ATMs, as though he were not in a cash business, you may revert to the aforementioned strangling.

    Cab drivers taken aback by this proposal's rigor must be nonetheless gratified to note it does not contain the usual criticisms about poor English, which is not their fault, and shabby cabs and attire, which is.  Nothing but good can come from this: better drivers and a happier citizenry.

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