Honest Cabbie made my night

by Mike Beggs

While taxi driving may be widely viewed as an entry position, you can learn a lot from the brief, few minutes spent with your cabbie.

Like last night, when I went to see a band at Timothy’s Pub, on Brown’s Line, in Etobicoke. I had my son drop me off, and took a taxi home to Port Credit. The driver was polite, and said he had “no complaints” about the way the evening was going.

When he reached my destination, the meter was up around $16, so I handed him a 20 and said, “Keep the change.”

At least, I thought it was a twenty. But I had a roll of bills in my front pocket, had knocked back a few drinks, and didn’t have my glasses on.

At this point, the 10-year City Taxi driver separated the twenty into TWO $20 bills, held them up in the air and said nicely, “You want me to keep the change on this?

I embarrassedly took the other 20 back. I thanked him profusely, asked his name, and was exiting the cab when he spoke.

“You know, this money thing, there are two paths you can go. That 20 will come to me. But if I had kept it, that would have been the wrong path.”

I was richer for the cab ride home, in more ways than one.