As we pulled away from my apartment yesterday, George, my Lyft driver, asked me if I wanted to be in his movie. He was really insistent. I told him that I’d never acted before, and he told me that I just needed to say the line, “Where’s the bank?” He then let me know that he was just kidding, and that I looked like a bank robber in my mask, sunglasses, dark shirt, and leather blazer. My mask was covered in TARDISes, so I was the nerdiest bank robber around, but otherwise, I could see what he was talking about.

Normally I don’t like it when my drivers talk to me, but there was something special about ol’ George.

He told me that he’d done over thirty thousand trips, and he was getting really good at reading people. He said he liked to keep his mind sharp by talking to his passengers, and he was never wrong. He said he could guess how long I’d been in DC: Seven years. (I moved to the DMV area in 2008 and to DC proper in early 2019.) Then he said he could guess where I originated from, just by looking at me, even with the mask on: Portland. When I told him no, he said it was definitely Philly. (I’ve come from many places, but never a city that started with a P.)

He wasn’t even remotely fazed, which leads me to believe that he’s not never wrong when he talks to other passengers. We talked about a lot of things, like how, no matter how great a place, your typical teenager wants to get the hell out, how there’s nothing to see in Kansas, how the passenger he dropped off before picking me up was hitting on him, and how everyone calls him sir, and he, for one, is sick of it.

When he dropped me off at my destination, and I found a place to sit, I took out my phone and gave him all the stars, as well as a hefty tip. And when the app told me that my ride home was going to be George, I held my breath waiting, only to find out it was someone else named George, who gave me a respectful silence the whole way.