Cabbin' Fever.

A few years ago I lived in Manhattan. One night, I was returning home from SoHo to TriBeCa, walking down Broadway. It was one of those windy winter Manhattan nights that cuts through layers of winter clothing and burns your face. It had started to snow and the slippery sidewalks were almost empty of people.

As with any bad-weather day, there were no cabs to be had. I craned my neck every few seconds to check their fare lights as they approached and finally i saw one letting someone out a block or so upstream near Spring St. I was on the corner of Grand and I jumped into the street and flapped my arms. The cab hit at a red light at Broome and I felt sure someone would claim it while it sat there. But no-one did and the driver kept on coming, almost passing me up but coming to a stop a few buildings down from where I stood.

I ran toward toward the car and as I did I noticed a man running up from Howard Street, the next corner down. It was a race and I would be damned if I was going to lose. I grabbed the door handle first and tried to open it but the other guy shoved me back and I slipped a bit on the icy street. "I don't think so!" he said. And then I saw he was carrying a young boy in his arms.

I regained my balance. "Fuck you. It stopped for me."

"Hey, I have a child here!"

"That's not my problem asshole." I flung the door open and into the man's body, forcing him to slip and fall to his knees in the street." He began to howl at the cab driver that he and his boy needed to get out of the cold and that he would report the driver to the TLC. I jumped into the warm car and the guy grabbed at the door trying to wrestle it open as I wrestled it closed, which I finally did. He was up on his feet again, slamming his fist on the hood of the cab while the boy stood by startled. The man kept yelling, but the swift wind carried the sound away uptown.

The cab pulled away from the curb and the man and his son watched as I rolled down the window and flipped them off. It felt like the right thing to do at the time, the violence, name-calling and all. That's where I was, in my head, when I lived in the city. Reliving this story now makes me feel terrible. Embarrassed. Sad.