INTRO:
I decided to become a taxi driver for many reasons. I needed a change of pace, I thought the movie was bad ass and I wanted to make my nights more productive. More important than these secondary reasons, I primarily wanted to answer this question: Who takes a cab in Lincoln at night? The answer is everyone. There are very few segments of the Lincoln community that have not sat in my car. I've had black, latinos, gays, bums, business men, sorority girls, and even other cab driver. But the most recurring and thought provoking archetype to ride in the Mercy Bender is the single mom. I would safely say that every phase of the typical lower class single mom has been in my cab in the last three weeks. I am going to paint a composite picture for you here. This will be very long.

It's two in the morning and she got in the cab while her grandmother slept. Her name is Karen, but that's not important. It could be Sarah or Mary or Amy or Jessica or any other. She's fifteen wearing a tube top that she keeps readjusting awkwardly. She sneaking out to drink with her friends. "Do you have a lot of intoxicated minors in here?" she asks with a kind of stiffness indicating she's just parroting someone else. "Does it matter?" I say. "Do your parents know you're sneaking out?" She informs me she does this sort of thing all the time. Her grandma is oblivious and she hasn't seen her parents in years. She hasn't finished puberty. There's some baby fat still visible and she carries herself like she thinks an adult would. She seems to me like the type of girl who triumphantly throws her Barbies away as a sign of victory over childhood, but later the same night goes back and removes one to play with when nobody is around. I told her I'm an English student. She expresses admiration when she tells me that "words are, like, my strong suit." She made a cliche worse. It doesn't matter. I drop her off, punch the voucher and tell he to watch out for those boys. I drive away.

Flash forward a few hours, a few years. It's a different girl but the same life. She's very petite yet comically overdue with her first child. The bulging stomach weighed her down this summer than a man could ever know. And I'm taking her to the city mission. Her baby's daddy was supposed to be doing what I am now but he passed out on the lawn. Technically she wasn't even supposed to go there.

Now I'm waiting outside of an Emergency Room. Her friend comes out, completely drained. "I can't wait to get high," she says. I ask politely why they're here. She told me there was a girl inside who was too scared to get a pregnancy test alone so she went along. Her friend marches down the wheelchair ramp wringing her hands. She gets in the cab and looks straight ahead. "I can't wait to get high."

Another night, another child. This time her hair is as frazzled as her nerves. She walks to my cab with two sons, one who is screaming for attention he wants. The other limp in her arms, pressing his right ear until his tiny hand turns purple. Inside the cab she holds the child with the ear infection across her lap like a pieta. We're off to the hospital at three in the morning and she hopes they get back at six so she can take them to the sitter before work.


This is a family circus and she's the ringmaster. In the back her three children want, demand, and require. Faster, driver. No stopping, we'll miss the train. I need to potty. She left town but came back a few days ago to testify in a trial against her first child's father. Now AmTrack, which only runs from 11 at night until six in the morning, needs her to round up her clan and stand for an hour until the 4:30 to California begins its journey.

The [Name Omitted] is an establishment dedicated to helping abused spouses and partners get back on their feet. The windows are barred and nobody can enter the property without it being documented. This is her final destination tonight. First she need to go to get medicine for her seizures. The last time she had one she "fell" and ended up in the hospital for three days. He could be back, maybe she did fall. I'm can't say for sure. All I know is the black eye inspires some understandable speculation. Her arms have hash marks of cuts. Track marks abound. The bags under her eyes and split-ended hair give her a distinctly disheveled look. I am moved and allow her to smoke in my cab for free. I pretend to admire her Zippo. I act like Limited Edition means anything. For my sympathy she gives me the only thing she can. She just met her oldest boy for the first time in fifteen years. I should give her my number and I can hang out with him. "You're about the same age," she says and stamps out her smoke. I close the door and take her as close to home as she'll ever get.


CONCLUSION:
I really don't have anything else to say. I can't take a political or religious stance on the matter and I can't tell you what to think about what I've written. Choice and circumstance are the only factors in determining how a person ends up and I'm sure each of the above cases features a healthy dose of both. The only thing I can say is a paraphrase: you are free to speculate about the causes, solutions and perceptions of the single mother as you wish.