Umans of Uber

It was Mother’s Day and I picked up Vince and Autumn for a short ride near the oceanfront.

“Did ya’ll call your moms today?” I asked them.

“Yup,” said Vince.

“I talked to her,” said Autumn.

“That works,” I said, “Does she live close by?”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh, I’m sorry…”

“No, no,” she laughed, “It’s cool. It was four years ago. But I talk to her still every day.”

“Wow. That’s great that you do that.”

“It’s a little creepy.”

“Not at all. It’s only creepy if she talks back.”

“Oh, she does talk back. All the time.”

“Really? How does that work exactly?”

 

“She comes to me in my dreams and says things or tells me where to find things.”

“Where to find things?”

“Yeah. Soon after she died, she would tell me where things are located in her house so I could find them.”

“Woah. And it worked? You found them?”

“Oh my god, yeah. See, the funny thing was, just before she died my mother’s house was robbed and she got all paranoid about her things and hid them in super-weird places after that. So, after she died, we couldn’t find stuff.

Like, we were all looking for her engagement ring, right? Her diamond ring. So, she would come to me in my dreams and tell me her diamond ring was with the yellow flowers. But her whole kitchen was sunflowers. So many things in her house were actually yellow flowers. She had yellow flowers in her garden…”

Vince interrupted, “Not very helpful, right? I mean, come on, Mom…”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, “She could have been a little more specific.”

“But that’s the humor of dead people,” Autumn said. “So, she keeps telling me it’s with the yellow flowers, but I’ve looked everywhere. I even dug around in the garden to see if she buried something out there. Nothing.

“Then, like three months later, I’m gathering up a bunch of her clothes to take to Goodwill, and I feel something in the pocket of a pair of jean shorts. It’s a small box, and I know immediately that this is her ring. I’m super-intuitive about stuff like that.

“So, I take it into the kitchen, all dramatic. I sit down and open the box. And there it is–Mom’s diamond ring. And I have this, like, moment with myself. And I look up, and I’m like, ‘Mom, I know you haven’t been bull-sh–ing me. What the f– is up with the yellow flowers?’

Then I have a thought. I walk back into the other room and look at the shorts. You know how they have tags on the inside?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, these pants had a giant tag–a crazy humongous one. And guess what was on it?”

“A yellow flower?”

“A big yellow sunflower!”

“Crazy.”

“I laughed. Like my mom was just messing with me the whole time.”

“I guess so. I mean, she could have said, ‘It’s in the pants’ instead of ‘with the flowers.’ Saved you some trouble.

“But that’s my mom for ya!”