Limo Stories #1

Its 6:00 AM and 12 degrees on the Tuesday before Christmas. I back down a long suburban driveway for a 6:15 AM pickup of a woman plus three extra passengers. At about 6:10, the woman comes out to tell me that the bags are ready to go. Now she’s the typical kept housewife: no job, three to four kids and the most serious thing she has to deal with on a daily basis is keeping her yoga appointment. I get out of the car to fetch the bags off the porch, dump them in the trunk and out comes a boy and girl about seven years old.

The girl gets in first and dutifully puts her seatbelt on. The boy, who’s jacket isn’t zipped up, gets in and says, “I won mommy sit in the middle.” I tell him to zip up his jacket and he says, “I don no how.” I zip it for him and then ask “So, what do you say?” And after a few seconds he replied “Huh?” Great. No manners and he can’t zip up his own damn jacket. Future pampered star material here.

They both offer up that they are sick. That’s fucking wonderful; just what I need, unpaid time off. “I’ve got strep,” The girl says with the same intonation as if she was happily announcing “Daddy bought me a pony!” Which probably isn’t far from the truth with these people. Not to be left out, the boy said “ib god a colb”. I’m beyond thrilled that I have to detox the car after they smear the doors and windows with their germ-infested nasal secretions, turning the car into a rolling petri dish.

A short while later, Mommy comes out carrying an infant. I ask her if she’s got a car seat for the baby. She says, “Oh no, that’s too much to deal with.” That’s terrific. Not only do I have Cough and Wheezy sitting behind me, I’ve also got an overburdened mommy holding a 30 lb. highly animated projectile in her arms.

Now if this was my company, I would refuse to move the car one inch until she got the car seat. But because I work for single-focus scumbags, I have to transport them, no matter what. So, I take a shallow breath and head toward JFK.

On the way down, the Typhoid Twins have this odd fascination with the macabre. They get very excited when we passed not one, but two different cemeteries. “Look Mommy, tombstones!” and “Wow, there sure are a lot of dead people there.” Any birds in flight became buzzards. I wonder what hallucinogens Mommy sprinkles on their Cream of Wheat each morning, or does the nanny do that job for her also.

To round out this lovely joyride, I’ve got Baby Huey using his mommy as a ladder so he can climb up on the rear deck for a better view out back. He’s also very handy locking and unlocking the doors and attempting to open his window. Mommy’s clue free. She’s busy singing Christmas songs to herself and thinks this is all so cute. Ah, to be oblivious.

As soon as we get to the airport, I jump out and dump their bags at the curb. I don’t even bother to wait for a thank you that isn’t coming. I got back in the car and got the hell out of there.

On the way back, as I’m crawling in bumper-to-bumper traffic, some putz in a Saab doesn’t hit the brakes until after he stamps his license plate into my rear bumper.

Thankfully, the physics major wasn’t breaking the land speed record; otherwise it would have been a hellacious whiplash and more money out of my pocket, like the recent $125 double parking ticket that was unknowingly deducted from my paycheck.

Technically I was “Double Standing” with my flashers on. I saw the traffic cop coming, circled the block, came back around and my client jumped in. Usually they don’t write you up if you move, but this character must have been scoring brownie points and working towards his quota, on my account. I would have fought the ticket on a great web site called parkingticket.com, but my benevolent employers plead guilty and paid it with my money, and without my permission. Nothing like working for free.