No wonder taxi drivers are crazy sometimes

My six-foot father left my four-foot-eleven-and-three-quarter-inch mother the day she brought their thirteenth child, my youngest brother, Timmy, home from the hospital. Things would be okay, she assured us, her brood. Things would be fine.

Three days later, our health insurance company called to inform my mother that my father had cancelled cover on all of us since he was preparing to be married to woman he's been seeing secretly for 6 months. My mother laughed. She told us not to worry since the hospital wasn’t charging for Timmy’s delivery. He completed her baker’s dozen, after all.

It didn’t take long for my mother to realize my father wasn’t going to support us. She said she preferred it that way, she didn’t want to feel obligated to him. She got her first job at age 37. She was to be a taxi driver, working night shifts!

Not realizing colours had to be washed separately from whites, I turned my family’s clothes pink later that evening when I tried my novice hand at doing laundry. My mother decided to take me to work with her on her very first night on the job to explain laundry practices.

When we arrived at the garage, my mother picked up her employer’s car insurance card and loaded me in her taxi. Just as she was climbing into the taxi, her dispatcher alerted her to my brother’s call. Something was wrong with Timmy.

Without turning her head to check for clearance, my mother backed the cab up and sped out of the garage. Taking a short cut, my mother turned into a narrow alley a few blocks down from the garage. Three men stood halfway down the passageway holding a chain stretched across our path. Three more stepped behind my mother’s taxi holding a second chain. We were trapped. As insurance for our safety, I began to pray.

Expecting the word of God, I was surprised to hear my mother yelling at the men surrounding us. “I don’t have time for this. I have kids. I’ll give you to three,” she yelled loudly, but without excitement. She revved her engine twice before flooring the gas pedal. We were home within minutes.

After getting Timmy to hospital where he was later operated on to fix a faulty heart valve my mother called the police. Unapologetically, she told the officers who arrived shortly after she hung up what had happened and provided her licence and insurance information for their review. With all twelve of her other children surrounding her, the officers assured my mother they’d return after investigating what they referred to as “the scene.” They never did.

The officers were at my mother’s garage the next day, however. When they departed the dispatcher’s company laughing, her boss called her over to inform her she’d be working the day shift, effective immediately, for “the safety of all concerned.”