Uber Rookie
Blind Faith and Abstract Art
I do art work abstractly, face close to my device in the back seat during trips to the Eye Doctor fifty miles away. This day, heading out, I grip the iPad on my knees more firmly than usual, leaning into the winding descent as the Morongo Grade snakes through the Pass from the Hi-Desert to the multi-lane I-10 freeway below.
(A right turn here would take us straight to Los Angeles and the Santa Monica Pier. A left turn delivers to any of the clustered desert cities of the Coachella Valley…each with Gated Communities, Golf Courses, Upscale Shopping, and Lucrative Medical Centers.)
I don’t drive. My vision no longer meets licensing standards.
But today, my first ever Uber ride is an unsettling surprise.
An unfamiliar car and driver pulls into my rural driveway. What the Heck?
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I didn’t know it would not be the usual Non-Emergency Transportation Company Vehicle. I know and trust that company’s drivers after several years of medical issues requiring surgeries, treatments, and follow-up trips to Doctors.
Each one is a careful driver, takes good care of me, and escorts me in and out of my appointments. They dutifully announce upcoming curbs, fountains, and occasional sculptures of Big Horn Sheep installed between the parking lot and the Doctor’s Waiting Room. They lend a steady elbow when I list to the left.
The driver always disappears during the hours I wait for my turn with the Doctor. Meanwhile, The Waiting Room is my Happy Place, the highlight of the day’s outing.
I love choosing digital brushes, swirling colors around with my finger to build shapes and textures, finding balance on the screen till it’s time for my exam.
Then when I’m ready to go home, the receptionist has normally texted the driver to meet me in the lobby. He helps me out to the Company Vehicle which is highly visible, having large, bold red and black branding. He gets me professionally seat-belted, and delivers me home to my doorstep after a safe and restful drive home. This is what I’m expecting.
Not today.
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Granted, the non-uniformed stranger did manage the twists and turns of the narrow pass through the mountains this morning. He did stay in the slow lane, letting the stream of death-defying lunatics pass us. I got to my appointment on time. He didn’t walk me in, but I know the way. So he takes off with a merry “Text me when you’re ready to head home!”
When that time comes, I am always worn out and undone. My eyes have been dilated, stained, photographed, measured, and pressure-tested. I have been informed, advised, and warned of future vision impairment scenarios. I am squinting, stinging, off-balance, misinterpreting foggy visual clues. I am a clumsy clown.
I hear a snappy Barbershop Quartet croon, ‘Grab your coat and get your hat! Leave your worries on the doorstep…Just direct your feet/to the sunny side of the street!’
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Today, no driver in the lobby. No one knew who to text. The girl’s on a break.
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I stagger out into a blinding blast of Desert Sun ricocheting off the mirrored medical complex, wondering how to summon Mr. Uber with a text. Low bushes look like radioactive swarms of greenish goldfish.
I can’t really see what I’m doing, and I am far from adept with ‘smart’ phones anyway. I hear a faint Ping from my purse, but can’t read the blurry text. A kind stranger on the sidewalk reads it to me.
I don’t really know what a ‘Blue Escape’ looks like, so I stand on the curb, innards flailing, trying to muster some dignity.
I raise my right arm at the elbow, thumb and fingers together, straight up. I turn my hand side to side, slowly, like a Queen waving from a Balcony.
I feel simultaneous relief and terror when one apparently pulls up to the curb in front of me. I mentally ‘whistle a happy tune’ and climb in.*
Later, safe at home, reviewing the day, I am grateful and sheepishly aware that I have just survived a very ‘First World Problem.’
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*If anyone has a consoling Uber Incident to share, or how you use art as a tranquilizer, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. Thanks!
Oh, my poor dear! What an experience. You are very adept, but also have guardian angels. Love this batch of artwork! The mountains and the mirage were my favs! 😌❤️
This really scared me. It might have happened in the past, but still, it reeks of personal danger. In today's human trafficking world, you can bet you'd need to be more aware of your driver! I hope you have better rides now!
Good to see the art you created around it - I esp love the one with the horror-faced person!