Conversations with Taxi Drivers Who Aren't Named Morrie

I have signed an official document swearing to do what I can to avoid incarceration in a nursing home. Ergo I go to the YWCA several times a week for swimming and water aerobics. That pleases my insurance company, so they send me there in a taxi. I also get picked up. With two exceptions, the drivers have come from Somalia or Ethiopia. I haven't reread Treasure Island in order to discuss piracy in depth with the Somalis. I have, however, just by chance, read an absolutely marvelous book which has been the basis of many a conversation with the Ethiopian drivers: Cutting for Stone. I highly recommend it even if you don't need topics to discuss while being driven to and from a swimming pool by an Ethiopian. Today, I learned that Selassie is a name with biblical roots. It means Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. No wonder Haile Selassie felt he was entitled to special entitlements. A few days ago, I got lessons in the pronunciation of place names like Eritrea.

The members of this particular Y are sympatico. They look like liberals, bleeding heart liberals. They were probably anti-war, anti-gun, pro-civil rights in the 60s. Probably two-thirds of them marched in Selma and/or heard King deliver his I Have a Dream speech. The young men and women on the staff are friendly, helpful, capable, and tattooed. The Director of the Aquatics Program trains and then takes swimmers to cross the English Channel from England to France the old fashioned way. They eschew the tunnel and swim across. The Old Baguette has no ambition to grease up and cross the Channel, but she successfully crosses the pool from shallow end to deep end and from deep end to shallow end. She eschews flotation devices and swims laps. What could be more old fashioned than that? She has her own system of keeping track of her laps. While swimming lap one, she thinks of vegetables that begin with A. When she has finished the Hubbard squash lap, she knows she has covered a quarter of a mile. She never swims less than a quarter of a mile, and sometimes she swims more. When she finishes the fennugreek lap on her second tour of the alphabet, she knows she has covered a mile.