Losses and Gains

I am almost finished with my second month of living in Chicago! I have yet to be mugged or shot so I consider this whole endeavor a success thus far.  (Jacque runs around the apartment knocking on all wooden objects).

I think the theme for my first 2 months here is losing things. Losing money (not actually losing it but watching it seep out of my ever shrinking bank account). Losing my cell phone. Losing my wallet. Losing my sanity.

However, with the exception of money, I have also found everything I lost.

I left my cell phone in a cab 10 minutes before walking into a callback. Obviously that was just a delightful callback experience. After harassing cab drivers at the train station for over an hour after the callback was over the taxi driver magically appeared. My phone was in his hand and I think if you listened really closely a chorus of angels singing “Halleluiah” was playing in the distant vicinity of all things imaginary in my brain. 

I threw myself into the strangers’ arms and gave him a hug so fierce that you think he was a doctor telling me I didn’t have some fatal disease after all. Not all people are “huggers” so I think this act of passion threw Mr. Cab Driver off (resulting in him kind of running [literally he was running Olympic style away from me] /escaping away from the insane woman [me] who was freaking out).  So naturally I chased him down and threw 20 dollars at him because I was in a state of euphoria and shock and wonderment

Next up I lost my wallet without even knowing about it. I woke up one morning to a facebook message from someone saying that they found my wallet. I thought it was just some rando and fell back asleep. Around 2 hours later I revisited the message and realized this wasn’t a rando but someone who had a couple mutual friends with me. I look in my purse and SURPRISE…my wallet is missing. The kicker is that not only was my wallet returned to me with everything in it but the person who found it is a teacher at Second City…who started teaching my class this week (post wallet retrieval).

The most recent thing I lost was my sanity. My mother was witness to this. I was doing the dishes and had my phone perched in the cabinet above my sink so I could simultaneously facetime with her and do the dishes. I know what you’re thinking…the phone fell out of the cabinet…well you’re wrong it didn’t...that would make too much sense

I was almost completely done with the dishes except for one stubborn bowl that needed to soak. I filled it up with soap and water to sit for a bit. Mom wanted me to ft (facetime) her on a different ios device so I grabbed my phone from the cabinet – hung up the phone – and clicked ft (other address). As the phone started ringing time started moving in slow motion.  The phone just fell out of my hand. Not because I had hurt myself or bumped anything that would cause a nerve to spasm. Just one second this clumsy girl is holding onto a cell phone and the next I see it slowly plummeting to its depth (aka the bowl I had just filled with soap and water). Meanwhile we must remember that phone is still ringing and as it hits the bottom of my personal pit of agony and doom (water) my mom picks up to hear earth shattering screams. I am surprised that no one actually came to my door because if I heard a scream like that from another apartment I would be concerned that someone was dying. According to my mom she heard something like this

Mom answers the phone

Jacque: 

“ NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

“RICE RICE RICE RICE RICE

sobbing

“PLASTIC BAGGIES PLASTIC BAGGIES”

“WHY DON’T I OWN ANY PLASTIC BAGS”

sobbing

“I DON’T HAVE 800 DOLLARS!!!”

“THERE ISNT ENOUGH RICE!”

sobbing

“I HAVE MINUTE RICE!!!”

more torrential sobbing

After having a semi nervous break down I call my mom on the computer, who already after hearing the word rice has made her own deductions and is looking up solutions on the inter webs.  Panic. Panic. Panic. Panic. Hysterical laughter. When life becomes so ridiculous, so intense nothing makes sense anymore. …Hysterical laughter. After literally 30 mins of agony and panic I remembered that I had forgotten that I have black tie insurance from best buy. So I brought my phone in…they gave me a spare to use in the mean time…and I got a brand new iphone for free 4 days later.

I would like to finish my thoughts for the day on a new segment I would like to call : Taxi Drivers of Chicago. At the end of each post I will chronicle the interesting cab drivers I met throughout the month.

Cab Driver 1: The Flutist

On an early morning cab ride to Union Station a nice man from Nigeria picked me up. His dream in life is to be a concert flutist. Instead of having the radio on, he had his flute on the seat next to him. At each red light or stop in traffic the flute would fly to his lips as he filled the taxi with a cacophony of music.

Cab Driver 2: The Soccer Player

On the way to an audition I complained about the miserable weather that we had been having. It was 103 and I did not like it one bit. He told me about how back in his home country, a small place in South Africa, it was 120/140 degrees outside.  The idea of living in that kind of heat made me want to crawl into an air-conditioned bubble. Apparently there is no humidity there so it’s actually not miserable at all. He talked so passionately about running around as a kid playing soccer with his friends. Everyone was sweating buckets but they didn’t care. They didn’t wear shoes…they didn’t have to. They just ran around and enjoyed life so fully until their mom called them home for dinner.

Cab Driver 3: The Sweetheart

This man by far is the best experience that I have had with a cab driver in Chicago. I was on my way to a job interview. (I tend to take cabs to places I need to look remotely attractive because in this heat (if I don’t) I look like I just took a dip in the lake before arriving.) He was this really sweet man from Belgium. He had a very typical French name of Pierre, which I found amusing. Pierre had moved to the city in the middle of May. So he hadn’t been there much longer than I had at that time. About 1.5 months. I heard some French coming from the stereo and asked him in French if he spoke the language.

Parlez-vous français ?

His eyes lit up. He told me that that in the entire time he had been driving a cab in Chicago I was the first person to ever talk to him outside of listing where they were going. Suddenly this man who was supposed to be just another body in a city of people to me became a real person. I started to speak my grammatically horrible French to him and tears came to his eyes (from joy…not because my grammar was so bad that it brought him to tears). All I did was try to get to know the person in the front seat and relate to them in their native language. But to him I had made his day. I made a lonely city feel a lot more connected. As Pierre spoke to me so beautifully about how he couldn’t describe the amount of joy that I brought to his day…I knew that even if I didn’t get the job I was on my way to I had already made a difference in the world today.