Are you watching the new season of Fargo? I’d recommend it. In last week’s episode there was a scene with Jennifer Jason Leigh, who’s great, where she makes some vicious comments about Americans and the debt we carry, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with an Uber driver last month.
I was in Salt Lake City for work, covering the Outdoor Retailer trade show, and on my way back home to Colorado I caught a rideshare from outside of the Salt Palace. The woman driving, Melissa, was nice, apologizing that the app made me walk several blocks to the pickup spot, even though it wasn’t her fault the Jazz had a game at the Delta Center and that was screwing everything up.
We started talking about going to conferences, and she told me she had to sit through a few that were held remotely during the pandemic. “I’m a CPA,” Melissa said. “So you can imagine how boring that was. Basically a Zoom call about taxes that lasted a whole day.”
“Horrible,” I said. “I felt bad for the kids who had to try to go to school like that.”
“My husband’s a teacher. He said it was impossible.”
We drove on. I looked out at the Christmas lights strung along the courtyard and buildings of a big, sprawling downtown hotel. It was early for all those lights to be up. I figured the Mormons liked to show how much they loved baby Jesus.
“If you don’t mind me asking, if you’re a CPA why are you driving Uber?”
Melissa said she was making good money as an accountant, but her family had $30,000 in medical debt. Her husband had to buy new hearing aids, and her daughter needed braces. They’re both Type 1 diabetics.
“We maxed out our out-of-pocket and the deductible for the insulin pump,” she said. “Then the insurance only pays 80%. We had bills that were like three, four thousand a month. I could’ve sold my house, but I’m doing this instead.”
I was tired from a couple of days of walking a trade show floor and talking to sources and writing about it. This woman was radiating pain and disappointment.
“That’s really tough,” I said. “Sorry to hear it.”
Melissa said her husband had started teaching a high school class that was made up of kids who had come to school with weapons. “It’s dangerous, but they pay him an extra $30 a day,” she said.
We were moving out of the city and the mountains were dark gray and dimly backlit. It would be dark in about 10 minutes.
“A lot of other developed countries don’t have these problems,” I said. “I wish we could fix it.”
Melissa said she didn’t want to get too political but that our politicians only care about money. “I had a guy sitting where you are tell me he just filed bankruptcy because he had a rare disease and insurance wouldn’t cover it,” she said. “He had a good job, too.”
I started to say, “Either you have to be rich in this country to stay alive—”
“Or you have to be poor enough for them to take care of you,” she said. “My sister’s husband had cancer and the chemo paralyzed him. He couldn’t work. Couldn’t move. She wanted to get a job and they said if she started making money they’d lose their medical benefits.”
I said I was sorry again.
“I’m sorry, I sound like I’m complaining,” she said. Everybody was sorry.
“Not at all. You have every right to complain.”
Melissa dropped me off at the Southwest curbside check in.
“You have a safe flight,” she said.
I got out and gave her a 20% tip and 5 stars. I went through security and went to a bar for a burger. The Atlanta Hawks were playing somebody on TV, I can’t remember who, and Trae Young was torching them.
The bartender, a guy about 40 with a goatee, long black hair, and glasses, noticed he had half of an extra shot in the bottom of a bottle of High West whiskey. He logged the excess whiskey in a book then poured it down the drain and opened a new bottle. Utah’s laws about alcohol are hilarious.
I was thinking about the conversation I had at DIA when I was starting this trip. I had too much time to kill at the airport. I’m chronically early for flights these days. It’s like I became a dad and instantly started showing up way before I needed to. But part of that is because DIA has become the third-busiest airport in the world and parking and security are a hot mess.
So I got through security with plenty of time to sit at the bar at the Timberline restaurant in the C concourse. I ordered a Caesar salad and a Gruvi non-alcoholic IPA. The rise of the NA craft beer scene has made not drinking alcohol so much easier this year. I can still sit at the bar and not annoy the bartender by only ordering water or soda. And some NA craft beer is pretty good.
Anyway, the bar was crowded and I was sitting right next to two women. Normally I’d leave a barstool between a stranger as a courtesy buffer, but I didn’t have a choice. As I sipped my beer and waited for my food I checked my work email on my phone and eavesdropped on their conversation. I barely leave my house these days, work-from-home life, so when I’m out in public I can’t help being interested in what people are saying. And this conversation was squarely in my wheelhouse.
The woman next to me was probably just past 30, drinking a Lefthand IPA, dark haired, and had a Midwestern accent. People say that Midwesterners don’t have an accent, but they do. I know it when I hear it. She sounded like one of my cousins, or someone else from my hometown.
She was speaking with another woman who was around 50, blonde and drinking white wine. They were clearly strangers, and the younger one was explaining the drama of her life. Their phones were face down on the bar and I liked them immediately for that.
I was happy to eat my salad and sip on my beer and watch the Oklahoma football game on the bar TV, listening to them talk. The younger one was flying home to Omaha from visiting friends in California. She had been living in San Francisco, moved around some more for love, but went back to Nebraska a year or so ago and was not finding it to her liking. The dating scene was awful. She hated how flat Omaha was. But her mother was there and she thought she could still have a life with her old friends. It turned out when she got there she felt as though she’d fallen behind — her friends had kids and mortgages and careers and all she had were her experiences. She was thinking about moving back to California, Los Angeles this time. I knew I was going to say something. I was waiting for the right time.
The older woman lived in Breckenridge and was a great listener, not quick to offer advice, sympathetic. As soon as the younger one said she had graduated from the University of Nebraska I had to make a comment.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but you sound like me 10 years ago.”
We had a lot in common, I told her. I’d gone through all that. I was from Nebraska, had lived in California and a lot of other places, and knew what it was like to return to a hometown that was flooded with memories. “It’s sort of the curse of being from a place like Nebraska,” I said. “Once you leave you feel like you can’t go home, but that’s where your people are.” She laughed and held up her beer and we cheersed.
I said her feelings might change if she decided to have a family. As we talked it made me appreciate even more what I had in my life. “Stay married,” she said. “The dating scene is brutal.”
I told her I’d like to say that this is just a phase that single people go through at her age, but once you leave your true home behind, that feeling of looking for the next best place to live never really goes away. Especially now, with remote work. If I was single and had a work-from-home job I’d be moving all the time. (It’s one of the themes of the novel I have out on submission, but I didn’t mention that.)
The older woman asked her about Zodiac sign. “I’m a Libra,” the younger one said. “My mom’s a Scorpio.”
“I’m sorry,” the older woman said.
I wanted to fill up my water bottle and check out Tattered Cover before my flight boarded, so I wished them both luck. “Just her,” the older one said. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah, just me,” the younger one said. “I’m a mess.”