Nerds and New World Orders According to Mr. Cab Driver

This is a conversation I just had with the taxi driver on the ride home. Paraphrased, but not translated because he already spoke in English.

Taxi Driver: Twenty-seven? (He had asked for my age.) You dress quite simply. You look like a nerd.

Me: *snigger quietly*

Taxi Driver: (Probably thinking I was offended) Forgive me for saying so.

Me: I take that as a compliment.

Taxi Driver: Thank you! Good. Some people take it as an insult, but it’s a good thing. It means you’re a bookworm.

After that, I was torn between trying not to laugh out loud and ignoring a small paranoid voice in my head saying “he’s got you pegged, next he’ll figure out where you live!” (Yes, I know I was headed home on the cab he’s driving. Small paranoid voice in my head is not very sharp.)

This was only a small — but definitely very funny — part in a conversation that consisted of:

• the arrogance of his child who is working as a call center agent, and how he wished they would’ve taken a course in IT
• the rise of a New World Order (TM) — according to him, the whole world will crash and 5 super powers will emerge: Russia, USA, China, and 2 others. I told him maybe Japan (at this point, he had me interested enough that I began to reply in something other than noncommittal “hmm’s”), he said it could be England and France. (I don’t think it could possibly be France, but whatever.)
• the threat of a U.S. stock market crash — he even asked me if I knew what businesses would go down first if the stock market crashed. I felt like I was being quizzed, and I had to admit that I knew very little about economics to tell. He said it was because I was too young, which led us to:
• the Great Depression — he wondered how the stock market could possibly crash, and then how so many in the US could go so hungry when it is a big country and they have good land. I told him it was probably because of the imbalance in wealth. He said that the rich are surely going to help the poor, otherwise they will be mobbed. I think he was too optimistic… or thinking about France during the revolution.

He had some points I didn’t quite agree to, but that was, as best as I could remember, the most entertaining taxi ride I’ve ever been in.