Monday, February 9, 2015

Lessons from Ubering # 3: Reesy

Reesy is from Seattle.  She has two chihuahuas.  There's the adorable one that constantly misbehaves and there's the mean one that barks and nips at everyone but is quite obedient.  She loves them both dearly.  She has four kids - there's the older two that are adults and the twins that were unexpected surprises.  She's divorced from her husband, but they still live together with the kids and they'll probably get remarried at some point.  He's not as mean now that he's switched from tequila to wine.  They like to go skiing on family vacations.  And Reesy is in L.A. on a mission of mercy: her niece has suddenly developed MS at the age of 32 and is experiencing paralysis on her right side.  She's rushed down to help her sister figure things out.

Reesy is in her early 50's and is quite pretty.  She says she can be mean, but based on her time working as a nurse and on our 45 minute conversation, I think she's an absolutely lovely person.

I don't get to know most customers.  Many just sit in the back and we barely talk.  With some I have conversations, but it's just to pass the time.  But once in a while I get one that I connect with.

I don't visualize.  When I close my eyes, I can't picture my mother's face or the house I grew up in.  So when I think of friends or family, I don't picture them so much as a have a 'sense' of them.  It's part feeling, part knowledge, part something else.  And after Reesy got out of my car, I had a sense of her.  Which was nice ... but sad.  Because I like her.  I would enjoy having her in my life.  But she's gone - I couldn't track her down if I wanted to.  So on one hand, I had a terrific 45 minutes getting to know someone really cool.  But on the other hand, she's gone forever and in a small way I had to grieve that loss for a few minutes.

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is here.  I would rather have had the experience of getting to know Reesy than not.  But it felt like a tiny little piece of me got pulled away at the end.

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