Two Uber Rides

This Might Make Sense Later: A Tale of Two Uber Rides

Saturday, June 30th 11:46 PM

Uber Ride 1: Gray Ford Focus

Her car was mostly well kept. I took off my earbuds to be polite and stepped in.

She turned to greet me. Her hair was a deep red. She looked not much older than me, but definitely older.

“Hi, how are ya doing tonight?”

“Pretty good! You know, I actually just dyed my hair back to black.” I said.

Her eyes brightened and she smiled. “Ooh, what color was it before?”

“See, I’d been swimming for a while, so it was turning like a weird orange-brown, then I decided to make it black again today.”

“Like the Amy Winehouse song: Back to blaaaaack.” she sang.

“Ha. Yeah.”

“Mine’s dyed too actually. My natural hair is like a super duper light blonde.”

I looked over again guiltily to confirm I hadn’t seen her hair wrong this whole time. “No kidding?”

“Yup. In high school I did pink, green, purple, whatever.” She smiled and stopped speaking to focus on backing out of the driveway. “Your color too! I was actually black haired most of senior year.”

“Oh wow.” I paused for a moment to decide if I should to tell her my other story involving hair dye. “Ya know, I was actually blue haired for a bit — on accident.”

She laughed. “On accident?! What do you mean?”

“Okay, so a few months ago I wanted to go light brown, but I didn’t bleach it enough so it ended up like, half-baked.”

She gave me an expression that seemed like it couldn’t decide between pity and excitement. “Uh huh.”

“Then a few weeks later my friend was like ‘Why don’t we try again?’ So we picked up a new bottle of bleach and dye and she suggested we mix it with the leftover dye from before… and then something crazy happened, I guess.”

“Oh my god!”

“Yeah, I don’t know what, like, insane chemistry was going on in my hair then,” I waved my hands wildly around my head for added effect. “…but I guess brown plus slightly darker brown makes blue!”

“That’s wicked! You know in my workplace, they don’t let you have weird hair colors. They’d never let me get away with blue.”

“But your hair is dyed. It’s red. I mean, what’s the cutoff for too risque hair?”

“Right?! Who knows. But tattoos, piercings, and jeans are allowed.” She said, raising a finger as she listed each item.

I considered what to say next. The tires started to grind against rougher pavement; we were leaving West Haven. I asked, “Do you have any tattoos?”

“Yeah, actually! My entire back is done.”

“Whoa, really? I thought about it once but I don’t really have anything like, worth tattooing.”

“Yep. I got five different tattoos from when I was 18 to 23. One for the most important event of each year.”

“Whoa.” That’s crazy, I thought. Crazy but awesome. “What would you say was the best one? You know, like the best best event?”

She turned to me and let out a kind of practiced laugh. “Ha, well I’d have to go with 23, my divorce.”

“Yeah? What does that one look like?”

“Well, it’s a bird.” Her mouth formed what resembled a smile, but it was one of those expressions you could tell was stowing emotion between the lines of her face. She continued, “And right next to that bird are the words:

This
might
make
sense
later.”

I wondered about the significance of those words for a moment.

“That’s clever. I really like that.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you have any idea what it could’ve meant back then?”

“Nope, and I still don’t.”

I chuckled. “Wow.”

Of course I wondered about it. And I wondered some more for the rest of the ride until our conversation became noise.

I didn’t ask to see how it looked, but I wondered what kind of bird it was.

I wondered about all the different possible meanings of her tattoo, of how the bird on her back could represent her future love, maybe a pearly white dove, so the words indicate how her divorce is validated once she finds somebody better for herself.

Or maybe it was like Maya Angelou’s poem about the caged bird, the one that sings of freedom, personifying the breadth of new possibility divorce from a failed marriage could bring.

Maybe still, it was to demonstrate how life plans are often winding and unpredictable (like, say, the decision to get a permanent tattoo that means nothing yet), so the words serve as a constant, bodily reminder that one day she’ll make sense of it all, or not.

I wondered about why she picked a bird, instead of a butterfly, since a butterfly would better symbolize the consequence of choice. I thought it was possible she was holding out for that tiniest chance, the right miracle where coincidentally, a bird of some form (be it figurative or literal) would eventually come to represent a significant moment in her life.

And from there, she could assume all the ensuing profundity of getting it tattooed back when she was 23.

Or maybe, I’d thought, maybe she just felt like birds that day.

And for some reason, what seemed like the most mundane answer was just as compelling as the wild others I’d dreamt up.

I thought hard about it, about how those five words might fit together so well, about how even the most polar interpretations worked in tandem, not against each another.

I thought about how a meaningless tattoo could seem to make more and more sense the more I thought about it, and then I lost myself in that spiral of thinking.

“Well, here we are. I hope you have a nice night.”

“Yeah, you too. Take care.” I opened the door and stepped out. We exchanged a glance for another moment before we both turned away.

I stood outside her car, awestruck and shaking from the cold Fair Haven air. I thought for a moment that this was all just my late night musings running wild, that there wasn’t any extra meaning to be uncovered with her spur-of-the-moment bird tattoo.

But whatever—I mean, this might make sense later.

Sunday, July 1st 12:20 AM

Uber Ride 2: Black Chevy Impala

I mistook my driver for someone who happened to be parked slightly closer. It was awkward to shut the door after that mistake and then walk to my actual driver.

I got in his car. We exchanged greetings. We didn’t speak for the rest of the ride. We exchanged goodbyes. I clumsily had to take a few extra seconds getting off my seatbelt and propping open the door — oops, it closed on my leg—propping open the door after I’d already said goodbye.

I rated him 5 stars.