Pedro the Nigerian Cabbie

So we’re standing along Foster Avenue in Chicago in Albany Park Saturday evening waiting for a cab, and my friends say how lately when they hail one it turns out to be quite the experience.

Proving their point, up comes this cab driven by a big NIgerian with a deep voice and an infectious laugh. He asks us where we are headed, which is to a movie.

You made my night, he says. He’s been looking for an excuse to see Live Free or Die Hard, and since he’s gonna be there, he might as well. He talks about needing to see something where stuff blows up real good, or words to that effect.

But we tell him we are heading to see the Michael Moore opinion piece Sicko.

“Oh I love that man,” he says.

He was going to be a pharmacist, until he realized machines are and will be doing more of that work. He became cynical about Big Pharm having a drug for everything, and the side effects from those drugs.

“If you are sick and tired, they should tell you to drink some water and get some sleep,” he says.

He has the passenger side window down and includes people in cars at lights next to him in the conversation. When he drives aggressively he asks passersby if he hurt their feelings.

He gets on a roll about Bill Clinton’s use of the English language and Monica Lewinsky and it all sounds funny coming from a guy with a baritone and a thick accent.

But he loves Bill Clinton, he says, how the man had flaws but knew what he was doing. Or words to that effect.

We wind up at the theater and sure enough he heads in to join us at the Moore movie. He even insists on buying us popcorn and sodas with the $20 we just gave him as fare.

Now I’m thinking this could be really weird, mainly because I am not used to strangers being so Goddamn ebullient. I’m thinking he might act up in the show, judging by how he talks to people in elevators and in concession lines.

But I really do worry too much.

Our new buddy Pedro kicks back and watches the flick, blending in as if we have known him for years.

This is a great way to see a movie, I think, knowing your ride home is there with you. And I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.

He loved it. He tells people we get in the elevator with (coincidentally, the same three we rode up to the lobby with) they should see it, too.

What he likes is the courage he says Moore has. Though I might agree with some of what he has to say, I think Moore is often full of shit,. But Pedro has a point to the point that Moore has been hammering in his last three films. That is, too much in American life is predicated on fear.

In terms of health care, Moore touches on how people now leave college with debt piled up to their ass, so they have to take a job and won’t make waves because they need to money and the health insurance.

Moore also makes France, England and Cuba look like workers paradises, which is what the right is going to be harping about. But who hasn’t had a personal experience with how dreadful the current system can be?

Anyway, Pedro tells us again how we made his night, that cab driving ain’t paying the bills, so it was a nice break.

I think he said he’s been in Chicago for at least 15 years. He came here for the architecture, or something like that. Art. For art’s sake, as he’s from the part of NIgeria that was the cradle of African culture.

He paints and sculpts and will be playing guitar from a couple hours to unwind when he gets back to his place, jazz on an acoustic guitar in fact. He tries another genre every year or so.

We try to pay him, but he won’t take the money. To be honest, there is no amount that would have done him justice. So we get his phone number instead.

If I were a religious man, I would think moments like this are why I am a writer. At the very least they are why I need to get out more.