Aside from pimps and hookers and drunks, you do get to meet a few decent people driving cab. The bartenders and waitresses that serve the pimps and hookers and drunks need a ride home too, and after I kicked the last boozy loser and his skanky whore out of my cab, I went back to the closed-up bars and take the staff home.

Some of them are okay. Some are more than okay. Take the staff at a place like The Ram. That's one classy joint. The clientele is all young brokers and lawyers, mixing with future brokers and lawyers still in school. They come there for the brass fixtures, the real oak and cherrywood interior, and the beautifully-presented live baseball and football on the giant screen TV's. They drink classy booze too. Not Black Velvet or Jim Beam, but good stuff like Sam Adam's beer, or Voodoo microbrew, made right there on the premises.

They come there for the girls too. Not the ill whores that schlep drinks at the Dead End Tavern, no way. The waitresses there are mostly college girls who work out and do extreme sports. Snowboarding, mountain biking, tae bo, you know? And tanning salons too, and if they need breast implants, the get breast implants, because they're classy college girls like that who will some day marry a lawyer. Not a typical Spokane waitress who will have five abortions and six kids before she's 25, and gets kicked off welfare because of the time limit.

Used to be, these Ram waitresses would get into my cab and keep their full, pouty lips shut, and turn their small college girl noses to the window and away from their dirtbag driver. Who can blame them? I had yellow fingers and brown teeth and stank of coffee. I always had a cup of coffee stuck between the cushions of the front seat, and the Ram waitresses never asked for me by name.

I'll spare you the horror of my experience quitting cigarettes. But I quit, and one of the things I had to do to quit was change all my habits. You have to break up the patterns of your life. One of those patterns was to drink coffee nonstop. I needed an alternative. Something that was sweet where coffee was bitter. Something that felt fresh and cool where coffee felt warm and stale, like a swamp or a sweatlodge. Ask me about sweatlodges some time. I've got a couple sweatlodge stories for you, I shit thee not.

Well, anyway, I looked around and found those Lunix hacker mints. They were powdery and they dried out my sinuses to the point that I had nosebleeds. And the fake sweetener left an aftertaste that lasted an hour. No way was I going to quit coffee, let alone smoking, if I had to suffer like that. But I kept looking until I found Hypermints. Holy crap!

What had been some kind of walk through the desert, an ordeal of a lifetime, had become fun! It became like a happy little song that fills your head and makes you whistle a tune. I started to act different. I used to tilt my head forward and stare at people from behind my incredulous eyebrows. I stuck my jaw out and growled out my disbelief and contempt for everything everyone said. I'd sit in grimy diners with a butt in one hand a cup of oily joe in the other, and I went on about what shits people are. That all ended with Hypermints. I became boring right? A happy little drone like everyone else? No!

Listen. It's 2:30 am, and I'm waiting outside The Ram for my fare. Some waitress. I had a bottle of Evian water stuck between the seats and some jazz on the radio. I was sucking on a refreshing Hypermint, and humming along to Diana Krall. The door popped open, and I saw the brown, taut leg of a Ram waitress slide into the car. She had on those cargo shorts from Bananna Republic, and an Oxford shirt with the collar turned up. Blonde, of course. Her address was in some newer condos on the north side. I sipped a little water and pulled out into traffic. She was watching me.

"You aren't like the other drivers are you?" her voice was like a bell. Funny how nonsmokers who go outdoors and move a little sound, "You're drinking water and not smoking."

"And the other drivers do? I hadn't noticed." I grinned a little and looked at her sideways as she laughed. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. "Mint?" I said.

"Love one."