Dignity

The cab driver gestured to the back of his SUV.

"Yeah, I think you're right," I said. "It fits."

He shook his head. We weren't really speaking the same language.

He began gesturing again, pointing at me, then the back of his SUV.

"Ahhh," I said. "Oh, you want me to sit back here...with that?"

I waved my hand at the desk we'd just purchased and crammed into the back-back of his car, eliminating his actual back seats.

He nodded vigorously.

As a kid, I loved riding in the back-back of our Jeep. It felt like an adventure, even if we were just going to the grocery store. 

But, at 31, I have standards. And dignity to maintain. You know, the kind of dignity you maintain while standing on Broadway trying to hail a cab with an Ikea desk you bought from a girl who just graduated from college.

I looked at Tiffany. She shrugged and headed toward the front seat.

I crawled into the back-back underneath our desk.

"Yes, ma'm," the cabbie said, pleased.

Crossing Manhattan takes a long time on a Friday night. Twisted up between the legs of our desk, I caught up on lots of emails and posted a status update on Facebook. I even texted Tiffany, concerned at the hardship she was facing up there in an actual seat, with air conditioning.

"Look in your rear view mirror," I typed.

"What am I supposed to be seeing?" she answered.

"My hand!" I responded. I was waving my hand like a maniac through the crack between our desk drawer and the right rear door, trying to catch her eye.

"Can't see anything," she wrote. "Tinted windows."

I sighed and turned around to find the man in the car behind me staring through our rear windshield, which was not, like all the other windows in our cab, tinted.

I gave him a little wave. 

Dignity be damned.