My Uber Awakening

I’m not by nature a very outgoing person.  Let me show you.

I recently made a trip to pick up some takeout.  After ordering and standing to the side, I noticed a person I knew – and really didn’t dislike much at all – eating dinner at a table maybe 10 feet away.

So, in my most stealthy way, I turned to the side, pulled out my phone, and quickly became visibly engrossed – for anyone who may have looked in my direction – in the latest content X thought for sure was “For me.”

My number was called.  I grabbed dinner and was in the car without having said a word.  A crisis of conversation averted.

This is who I am, and this can be a challenge in professional settings.  The networking.  The mixers.  The big lunches.  The annual dinners.

And I work in communications!

I know I’m not alone in this.  So much chit chat expected.  So little energy to do so.

Now knowing this, imagine how thrilled I was when our Uber app recently informed my wife and me that our approaching driver was a “motivational speaker.”

“Oh great,” I said.  “He’s gonna want to talk.  It’s what he does!  Did you click on the button that says we don’t want to talk?”

“Uber has a button for that?” my wife asked.

“It does, yes.  Can you still push it before he gets here?  Maybe he’ll get a notification.”

My wife and I were in Virginia.  Me for work; she for fun.  She’d spent the day Ubering around to the sites and the shops and picking out a nice place for dinner.  But before we could eat, it looked like small talk with a motivational speaker was the cover charge for the evening.

“Well, I’m not talking,” I said as the Cadillac Escalade rolled into the lot.

We climbed inside and both immediately noticed the same time.

“I’ve been in a lot of Ubers lately,” my wife said.  “But this is the first one that has had classical music playing in it.  It’s very nice!”

“I’m just built different,” the driver said.

And, we were off.

It didn’t take long for me to break my vow of silence and ask the driver a question about the community we were driving through. 

“I’m not really sure,” he answered.  “l’ve only lived here for about a year.”

It all could have ended there.  The talking.  But instead, small talk magic happened.

“Why did you move here?” my wife asked.

“The Navy,” he said.  “I’m about to be medically retired from the Navy.”

I paused.  Do I ask?  Do I keep it going?  Ehhhhhh… gahh!

“What did you do in the Navy?”

“I was a rescue swimmer.”

“A what?  What’s a rescue swimmer do, beyond, I guess, rescue people in the water?”

“Well, you know about Navy Seals, right?” Our driver began to explain.  “So, when they take off and fly on a mission, we fly after them and hang out.  If something goes wrong and they end up in the water, we go rescue them.”

Wait, what?!

“You rescue Navy Seals?!” I asked.

“Sometimes.  If they’re in the water.”

“How do you train for that?!” I asked.

“Oh, it’s super hard.  In fact, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.  But my mom had me when she was only 12 years old, and she is the toughest person I know.  Nothing was tougher than growing up with her,” he laughed.

Wait, what?!

“Your mom was 12?!”  I asked.

“Yep.  Toughest person I know.  Being raised by her made swimmer training seem like nothing.”

“So how did you become a rescue swimmer?”

“Well, I was a basketball player and was recruited to play basketball for Navy.”

Wait, what?!

“I hurt my ankle about a month before my first year and had to quit basketball.  But the thing is, you can’t quit the Navy, so I had to pick a job to replace basketball.  The guy who recruited me was like a mentor, and he had been a rescue swimmer, so I just said I’ll do that.  They were thrilled because no one volunteers to be a rescue swimmer.”

Fully engrossed now, “So, like how many people does a rescue swimmer rescue over the course of a career?  Like, have you saved six people, or 600?”

“I’m going to retire with 14 rescues,” he said.  “And my last one was the craziest!  I was called out because a husband and wife had somehow ended up not in their boat and in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Dubai.”

Wait, what?!  “The Persian Gulf?!”

“I jumped in from the helicopter and had the wife loaded into the basket when all of a sudden I was hit in the back of the head and the husband started to pull his wife out of the basket.  He was having a panic attack and not thinking straight.  I had to put him to sleep, get the wife back in the basket, and send him up next.  You should have seen what the wife did to him when they got back to the boat.”

Wait, what?!

“Here you go,” he said.  “This is the place.”

“I wish we’d picked a restaurant farther away,” my wife said.

I wish I hadn’t been so quick to judge an Uber driver whose profile said he was a “motivation speaker.”

Consider me motivated to be a slightly more willing to hit the networking circuit.