Uber Stories — April 15: My Neighbor, His Uncle, and What Gratitude Sounds Like

 I picked up a passenger while driving rideshare, and he turned out to be from my building since I was parked outside waiting for a ride.

We ended up talking about his uncle a lot. He said his uncle does a little bit of everything, wearing a lot of hats, working in real estate down in California, doing some TV reporting on the side, and juggling other gigs. It wasn’t just a job description—it came out like he was trying to map a whole personality through work, like that’s how you explain who someone is.

He said his uncle has kind of been a big influence on him. At one point, he kind of skimmed over it, like, “yeah, we were in shelters and different homes for a while.” He didn’t sit in it, just stated it and kept going, like it was something that already belonged in the past tense.

And he kept coming back to that idea. He even said he wrote his college essay at Saint Paul Tech about his uncle and how proud he was of him, and how grateful he is that college gave him the opportunity to put that into words and really reflect on it.

Now his uncle is doing well, even supporting him through college. And he kept coming back to that idea—how aware he is of it, how he doesn’t want to take that opportunity lightly or use it in the wrong way. It wasn’t performative, it was more like he was reminding himself out loud. Like gratitude as a way of staying oriented.

He also made a comment about how a lot of people my age tend to take things for granted, like they’re owed something. He said, “kids these days just think things are supposed to be handed to them,” and the way he said it wasn’t angry exactly, more like he’d noticed a pattern and decided it was true. Like there’s less appreciation for what people had to go through to get there.

And I told him, I used to have a millionaire friend too, but we’re not friends anymore. It’s something about them—these millionaires are just very direct, like they’ve lived in that world so long they act like they can tell anyone what to do, and nobody really questions it.

And he nodded at that, like he recognized it immediately, and said his uncle was the same way—just used to having that kind of control and presence in situations, like confidence had become a default setting rather than something they turned on

Tsunami:a rideshare story

 I picked up my Uber passenger near Lake Minnetonka, the kind of place where the houses sit so close to the water it almost feels like you’re on an island.

Right before I picked her up, I had been driving another passenger around this same lake.

Looking out at the water, pointing at houses, imagining a different life.

“Yeah, I’d live there.”
“Oh that one? I’d be down by the water every single day.”
“I’d get a dog just so I could walk it along the shore.”
“I’d have a boat. Not even for anything important—just vibes.”

And then, out of nowhere, they said:

“My worst nightmare is getting hit by a tsunami. Like imagine if one of those buildings fell and just—boom—wave comes right at you.”

I laughed at the time. It sounded dramatic. Almost like a movie.

But the image stayed with me.

---

My next client got in.

She told me she was originally from Japan, living in Minnesota now.

We started talking about why she moved.

“I came here for work,” she said.

“And you like it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “My favorite part is the four seasons.”

I laughed a little.

“Really? Why would anyone want to live in Minnesota?”

She smiled. “Why?”

“Because of the weather,” I said. “It’s cold like six months out of the year. I’ve lived here my whole life—I’m kind of over it.”

She laughed at that, like she understood both sides of it.

---

We were driving along the water again, the same stretch, the same houses.

So I brought it up.

“You know, right before I picked you up, someone was talking about tsunamis,” I said.
“They were saying like, what if one of these buildings fell into the water and caused a wave.”

She paused.

“That’s strange,” she said.
“I actually had a dream about a tsunami recently. Back in Japan.”

I caught her eyes in the rearview mirror.

She nodded.

“Yeah. It felt very real.”

Then she let out a small, almost surprised laugh.

“And now you’re telling me someone was talking about that today…”

“I know,” I said. “They were pretty convinced it could happen here.”

That’s when she shook her head, more certain this time.

“No,” she said.
“That wouldn’t happen.”

“That wouldn’t?”

She smiled slightly.

“No. I used to live in Japan. A building falling into a river wouldn’t cause a tsunami.”

She wasn’t dismissive. Just… sure.

Then she looked back out at the water.

“My parents live on a hill in Japan,” she said.
“So they’re safe.”

A pause.

“…but if something bigger came… higher than expected…”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

She didn’t have to.

---

It made me think about how the passenger I had just dropped off had been sitting in this same seat, looking out at this same water, talking about their fear of a tsunami—and now she was responding to it without even knowing that conversation had already happened. They were almost talking to each other through me. I like moments like that, when one ride carries into the next and people end up connected without realizing it.