Character
After dinner last night with some friends, I took the train back to my neighborhood. From the station, the last trip home was one ride on a jeepney, the most common mode of mass transportation in the Philippines. (see images)
So I stepped into the first available one headed in the right direction, moved to the front, and prepared my fare. When I reached over to place the coins into the open hand of the driver...lo and behold...the driver was a lady!
I've been taking jeeps for a long time now, and I've never encountered a lady driver before. As in never. Boy, was I surprised. I hope the goofy grin plastered on my face on the way home didn't unsettle the other passengers.
She looked to be in her early or mid-thirties. On her head she wore a grimy tennis or golf visor in pink, with color-matched (natch!) light-red shirt. Her hair was pulled neatly back in a ponytail held by a red, ruffled hairband, and she even had the standard white-going-grey towel draped around her neck. She handled the collection of fares and the handing out of change as deftly as any other driver, even while the vehicle was in motion. And she did one better than other drivers I've seen, the "wussies" who keep a companion to handle fare collection. Yes, I know it's an unsafe practice to keep only one hand on the steering wheel, but that's how she did it when she had to count change, and didn't seem discomfited at all when she needed to shift gears; her hand moved swiftly from wheel to stick and back to wheel, no problem. And let me tell you, jeepneys are crude and heavy vehicles; they do not come with power steering.
She even sat a bit to the side and diagonally to the wheel and not directly in front of it, just like I've seen many other jeepney drivers do. (I still don't know why that is. It's a mystery, one that I'll get to the bottom of one day when I gather enough guts to ask a driver without fear of offending him...um...or her. Then I can add this knowledge to the other useless information and trivia I carry in my head. Who knows? It might be tied somehow to saving the world, and may not be so useless after all).
When I got off at my stop and started my walk home, I was still smiling.
Being the only lady I've ever encountered doing something I've only seen men do, I wonder what she's like; how colorful (or not) her personality is; what makes her laugh, cry, get angry; what her background is; what she was like as a child; if she has a family, a husband, children; and how she ended up driving a jeep for a living. I wonder about so many things.
Man, would I like to use a character like that in a story, even as a minor one!
So I stepped into the first available one headed in the right direction, moved to the front, and prepared my fare. When I reached over to place the coins into the open hand of the driver...lo and behold...the driver was a lady!
I've been taking jeeps for a long time now, and I've never encountered a lady driver before. As in never. Boy, was I surprised. I hope the goofy grin plastered on my face on the way home didn't unsettle the other passengers.
She looked to be in her early or mid-thirties. On her head she wore a grimy tennis or golf visor in pink, with color-matched (natch!) light-red shirt. Her hair was pulled neatly back in a ponytail held by a red, ruffled hairband, and she even had the standard white-going-grey towel draped around her neck. She handled the collection of fares and the handing out of change as deftly as any other driver, even while the vehicle was in motion. And she did one better than other drivers I've seen, the "wussies" who keep a companion to handle fare collection. Yes, I know it's an unsafe practice to keep only one hand on the steering wheel, but that's how she did it when she had to count change, and didn't seem discomfited at all when she needed to shift gears; her hand moved swiftly from wheel to stick and back to wheel, no problem. And let me tell you, jeepneys are crude and heavy vehicles; they do not come with power steering.
She even sat a bit to the side and diagonally to the wheel and not directly in front of it, just like I've seen many other jeepney drivers do. (I still don't know why that is. It's a mystery, one that I'll get to the bottom of one day when I gather enough guts to ask a driver without fear of offending him...um...or her. Then I can add this knowledge to the other useless information and trivia I carry in my head. Who knows? It might be tied somehow to saving the world, and may not be so useless after all).
When I got off at my stop and started my walk home, I was still smiling.
Being the only lady I've ever encountered doing something I've only seen men do, I wonder what she's like; how colorful (or not) her personality is; what makes her laugh, cry, get angry; what her background is; what she was like as a child; if she has a family, a husband, children; and how she ended up driving a jeep for a living. I wonder about so many things.
Man, would I like to use a character like that in a story, even as a minor one!
And frankly, this should teach me, teach all of us, something about stereotypes!
posted by pgenrestories at 7:35 PM
2 Comments:
Did you see what sort of footwear she was driving in? Do people around there normally driving barefoot or something?
@Anonymous: No, people don't normally drive barefoot here. It was too dark for me to see what her footwear was, but jeepney drivers usually wear sandals, flip-flops, or simple sneakers.
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