A cab driver story. An asshole cab driver. Just a rant, actually.

Saturday night, around 10 PM, Livoberezhna neighborhood. A few cabs are parked near a bus stop, drivers away somewhere, but come running back to their cars when they see us approach. We tell them how much we're willing to pay, they discuss it briefly among themselves, and one of them gets into his car. He's young, too skinny, with very short brownish hair - guys his type all look the same to me somehow.

I'm in the front seat, Misha and Marta are in the back. The car begins to move, and the wind begins to blow into my right ear. My first thought is I haven't shut the door properly, and since we are driving slowly, I open it and then shut it again, a bit more forcefully than the first time.

Then I realize that the window is rolled down a tiny little bit, so the wind isn't the door's fault, and I apologize to the driver - but he's already half-screaming, half-whining at me: Why the hell do you have to shut the door like this, it's a new car, just half a year old, couldn't you just leave it be, don't you see the window is open, etc.

I try to reason with him: But what's gonna happen to your car - is it made of cardboard or what?

Nah, he's still hysterical: It's not some Volga, you shouldn't have shut the door like this, period.

(For the record, the car's a Daewoo.)

We drive on in silence for the next three minutes or so. Soon after we get on Brovarskyi Prospekt, the guy begins to speed like crazy. The car in front of us is too slow for him, so he drives up real close to it, nearly bumps into it actually, and flashes his lights to chase the slow driver off to the right. The incoming traffic is real close to us on the left, and for a few moments, until we pass that other car, things are just way too fast for me to bear.

I know it's bad to distract drivers from driving, so I try not to yell at the idiot: What you've just done, don't you realize that the damage could've been worse than just losing your damn door? Like, much worse?

He doesn't feel he's done any wrong: I've been driving for nine years! That slow jerk, what am I supposed to do, wait forever?

I remind him of a child passenger in his back seat. He tells me he's got a child, too.

I more or less yell at him and order him to slow down and drive like a normal person.

For the rest of our trip, he obeys.

The more I think about it, the more furious I get. For a number of reasons that I'm not gonna write about here because they are obvious.