“Don’t skip the queue”
A month ago, I moved from Pretoria to the City of Gold when I got an internship at the Sandton Chronicle. Although totally clueless, some days are better than the others and each ride to Craighall from Germiston and vice versa, involuntarily teaches me a life lesson.
This morning was no different. I was super late for work, had a hectic start because of load-shedding, had to apply my make-up in the dark and didn’t even manage to have breakfast. So yes, I am typing this on an empty stomach.
Unfortunately, I do not drive so taxis have sort of became ‘home’. I meet new friends there and converse with really interesting people. Like this morning, I exchanged numbers with some girl, I think pretty is the appropriate word to describe her. We had conversed earlier about my ‘make-up in the dark’ shame. She was nice enough to compliment me and I realised we have more in common than I thought, she’s still studying and works part-time. That’s enough similarities, honestly.
I always avoid sitting in the front, taxi math being the obvious reason. This morning I had no choice but to skip the long, slow queue and landed in the front seat. Karma did not take long to serve me. I had strategically squeezed myself in-between the driver and passenger and was sitting uncomfortably the whole time. Serves me right, right? As the taxi fare is R13, I started counting multiples of 13 in my head – 13, 26, 39, 52… Just before a R100-note for three people was handed to me, everything went blank, not because I did not know how to count but because taxi math is always humbling. I quickly handed the money to the lady next to me and in less than three minutes she was done.
Fortunately, I got to work on time, but it still didn’t conceal the fact that I was uncomfortable the whole 30-minute ride.
So Itumeleng Komana, what have you learned from your ride today? Wake up early, eat breakfast and don’t skip the queue because karma never misses anyone.
