The Price of Being in a Room:A rideshare story

 

Vision is a strange thing.

You don’t always realize what you’re seeing clearly and what you’re not until someone points it out.

That’s how the conversation started.

My rideshare client shared that she had just had cataract surgery and that one of her eyes still seemed like it was changing. The doctor said she might still need glasses.

At first, when they told her she had cataracts, her reaction was, “Oh no, I’m too young for cataracts.” “My dad had them.”

Then she started describing the surgery.

“They make a slit in your eyeball.”

“Oh my God.”

She laughs lightly.

“Don’t think about it. The procedure is very fast.”

Like that fixes it.

Then she mentioned that cataracts can come from something as simple as steroid use over time.

That lands.

I tell her I recently had a steroid injection in my neck, and I’ve had several orthopedic injections in my knee. My mind is already going—like maybe I need to slow down with that.

She says, “Yeah, I’ve had my share of things too.”

Then she says after her procedure, she had a chauffeur.

Then she asks me what I do.

And for some reason, I say:

“Yeah, I just go downstairs and usually the nurse is following me, and then when they exit, they keep reminding me about my chauffeur… and then I just start running away.”

There’s a pause.

“So you don’t meet anyone in the parking lot?”

“No.”

“So you basically drive yourself home?”

“Yes.”

And that’s when it hits me.

I am currently driving her.

Her life is in my hands.

So I backtrack.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“Oh no,” she says. “That’s fine.”

Which is what people say when they’re being polite.

I try to explain it.

“It’s just that I’m a single mom. I don’t really have that kind of support system.”

She understands.

Then the conversation shifts.

Not away—just sideways.

I tell her about a friend of mine who built schools in Africa. I met her through a writers group, one of those spaces where you don’t have to pay your way in, you just show up and write.

That connection led me into a completely different world.

The first time I visited her house, there was a pool in the basement. And she ordered DoorDash every day.

It’s one of those moments where you don’t immediately label it as wealth—you just realize you’re in a different version of normal.

She laughs when I say that. She gets it.

She tells me she’s had similar experiences—meeting people who live on completely different financial levels than she does.

Then she tells me about college.

“I had a roommate,” she says, “and she was cleaning the toilet with Windex. And she goes, ‘Am I doing this right? I’ve never cleaned a toilet before.’”

She laughs, but she’s impressed.

“She wasn’t used to it. But she was willing to learn.”

That sticks.

Not where someone comes from—but how they move when they’re somewhere new.

Before she gets out, she tells me she used to be a teacher.

“I can organize things,” she says. “Lesson plans, structure… but entrepreneurship? That feels like something other people do.”

I think about that for a second.

The “other people” line.

Then she asks me about writing. About comedy.

And when I tell her, she pauses.

“You remind me of Melissa Villaseñor,” she says. “You should follow her. The way you talk about it—it’s similar.”

I laugh a little because it catches me off guard.

Most of the time when I mention writing or comedy, it doesn’t land anywhere. It just passes through the conversation.

But this time it does.

Not as validation.

More like recognition.

She thanks me, gets out of the car, and closes the door.

And I sit there for a moment before driving off.

Thinking about how often people are moving through class without saying it out loud.

Not in big dramatic ways.

Just in small adjustments.

What you assume you can say yes to.

What you quietly calculate before you say no.

What you think you’re “supposed” to understand in a room.

And I realize the conversation in the car wasn’t really about cataracts or surgery or even health.

It was two women trying to figure out where they stand in the worlds they keep walking into.

One of us talking about school invitations and indoor parks and trying not to overthink the price of things.

The other talking about fundraisers where everything from fifty dollars to twenty thousand exists in the same room.

Both of us recognizing the same thing in different language.

That class isn’t something you declare.

It’s something you navigate.

Every day.

Sometimes while you’re driving.

Sunday blog post

It was a week of rideshare driving, time at the indoor park (including a brief, slightly terrifying zipline moment), the Cinco de Mayo parade in Saint Paul right in my backyard, and seeing The Wizard of Oz

Cinco De Mayo parade 

Monday and Tuesday I drove rideshare and picked up several interesting people, including two IRS employees who were on the phone going back and forth with clients. Not arguing exactly, more like intense agreements. Very direct, very confident. Honestly a little intimidating, and it made me think about my own voice and how I sound in situations like that.

Midweek I went out and got materials for my son’s bicycle so he can ride better and more comfortably.

Random pic of Minnetonka treatment center .love Minnestonka (minnesota beautiful city)

Pics from moving around this week while driving UBER

My son zulfi petting Toto

A rainbow of post-it @childrens theater  kids things like “what is one fear you tackled?”

The view from my building in Spring

I also drove rideshare a few more times during the week—just being out there, listening, observing, having small moments with people.

Friday and Saturday we went to the indoor park, just letting him play and move around.I got harnessed for the indoor zipline,honestly it was scary and I kept meeting up with a little girl who kept zipping around me ,luckily I’m 4”6 or I don’t know how I’d do it. 

On Saturday,the parade was busy and fun as well living so close makes it for encompassing.

Last Saturday we went to see The Wizard of Oz with the children’s theater .

That was the week. Just a series of things that happened,some small and some very memorable grateful for momentum..

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.

Two IRS Employees and a Downtown Pickup, Skyscrapers Overhead, Froot Loops Underfoot

 Two IRS Employees and a Downtown Pickup, Skyscrapers Overhead, Froot Loops Underfoot

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I picked them up downtown—two IRS tax employees in suits, both carrying satchels and luggage that made them look like they were already inside a very structured kind of day. I pulled over near a safe spot by a busy intersection, tall buildings around us, skyscrapers. 

The guy immediately introduced himself, like he was setting the tone, maybe trying to get a sense of who I was and whether I was capable of getting him through downtown.

He told me he was in a slew of meetings (a slew of meetings), and I clocked that phrase right away.

My car had Froot Loops on the floor, which I noticed a second too late. That detail just sat there quietly in my mind while they got in.

They were very composed. Unfazed. That’s the word. Like nothing about traffic, detours, or timing was really going to touch them emotionally, they were just adjusting variables in a system.

I took the “slew of meetings” as a sign he might want to talk, like we were about to have some kind of driver-passenger conversation to pass the time.

But then I realized he wasn’t really talking to me.

He was on the phone with someone else.

On the ride, one of them was on a high-intensity phone call about real estate. It kept circling this pressure point, whether to move forward on a deal or switch to another lawyer who would cost them a $300 conversation just to keep things moving.

At some point, I told them I did improv comedy.

I asked if they liked comedy, like I was trying to justify the pivot in real time. I think they said yes, or at least enough to keep the conversation from dying immediately, and I leaned into it, talking about improv, how it helps me think on my feet, read situations, not freeze up.

They asked where I perform, and I could tell they were halfway curious, halfway just being polite, but I kept going anyway.

And then I made a joke about my own IRS situation, something about how I had recently dealt with it through University of Minnesota tax lawyers. And even as I said it, I had that split-second internal pause like, why did I just say that, especially to IRS employees sitting directly behind me.

It was one of those moments where your mouth is already ahead of your judgment.

We got onto I-94 West, and then there was a detour. I hesitated. I couldn’t immediately find my way back onto the interstate, and suddenly I was the one unsure.

And somehow, they weren’t.

They stayed calm the entire time. Unfazed again. Just adjusting to the delay, measuring everything in minutes rather than emotion.

And then they were the ones guiding me back, this strange reversal where two out-of-state passengers were helping me navigate a city I was supposed to be driving them through.

Two IRS employees in suits, me talking about improv and laughing a little too fast at my own thoughts, all of us trying to get somewhere different but sharing the same moving box of time for twenty minutes.

And underneath all of it, I realized this is what I do, I talk my way through uncertainty. I reach for comedy when I’m not sure how I’m landing. Even when it’s messy or slightly awkward, it’s how I stay in motion