Where are we from? How did we get here?

“Where are you from?” I asked him, sitting across the table, which was covered with maps of San Francisco.

“Maybe,” he said, heavily accented, “I am from here.” He pointed on the map to the intersection of Washington and Columbus. The Transamerica Pyramid is at that corner. It was doubtful that my friend, who literally smelled like shit, was from there.

“Really?” I asked. He looked at me and looked at the map again.

“No. Maybe I am from here.” His finger slapped down on the map, again, this time in the middle of the Presidio.

“Nevermind,” I said, aiming my attention downward at the stack of flash cards in front of me. One side of the cards had hotel names. The other side had addresses and intersections.

“Maybe I am from here,” he said, pointing to another random location on the map. I was ignoring him.

Dave Trotman, our instructor, also a cab driver, listened closely to our conversation. The strange man at the table was an enigma – a crazy, possibly mentally-ill enigma who would be part of my peer group as a taxi driver.

Outside of the aging office building at 7^th and Market where he held his classes, Trotman and I discussed his origins.

“I think he’s from some Eastern European country,” Dave said.

“I would like to give the Eastern Europeans more credit.”

“Every country has its crazies,” he said. “Oh, and I figure one more day of this and I’ll give you your certificate.” I’d only been in his class for three days.

“What about him,” I asked, pointing up and to the building.

“A few more weeks. He can’t start driving people around until he can at least identify Market street on a map," he said.

I finished my cigarette and we went back up to the classroom, where our friend was still staring blankly at the map.

* * *

Sometimes I ask myself how I got to a certain place in life. The events behind me are always blurry, and it’s hard to figure out how the events of the past caused the effects visible in the present. The place in question, here, was my position in a plastic classroom chair across the table from the man who was, now, talking to himself. From my vantage point, I traced the string of events back in time: I had been away for a number of months, in Europe. I returned, broke and desperate, but with a resolve not to get involved in the industry I had left when I left the States. At coffee, I saw an old friend who had been driving cabs in the City for a year and he broke it down for me. He told me about the classes I would have to take, the paperwork I would have to fill out, the fees I would have to pay to people like Trotman and entities like the City. And it seemed more interesting than a regular job – a coffee shop job, an office job, a construction job. There I was.

* * *

Months after our encounter across the table in the office building, I saw the Eastern European on the street. He was behind the wheel of a taxi, sitting at the cab-stand across the street from the Grand Hyatt. He was staring blankly at the hotel. Someone had given him a job.

But, I only saw him once. God only knows what kind of chaos that man caused, driving around in San Francisco at night. Maybe the Police do, too.