The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget

http://www.zenmoments.org/the-cab-ride-ill-never-forget/

by wolfden • 14 years ago

688 188 14 years ago

If this story doesn't nearly or outright bring a tear to your eye, please pause for a moment and ask yourself why.

[edit: it doesn't matter whether it's real vs fiction, it's a question of how you would react if you did something in the normal course of what you do, and then come to realize at it had a profoundly positive impact on someone else. Is not the romanticized part of the modern conception of a startup a blend of changing people's lives positively at skill via products that make the world better plus a dash of hopefully positioning yourself to there after only work on projects that capture your eye?

I will not dispute that the story here is cute and possibly fiction. But even if your day to do focus is building better tech in some domain, it's about building better tools for other people. ]

tallanvor• 14 years ago

Because not all of us are affected emotionally to the same extent as you?

I can agree that the person telling the story did a good deed without feeling overly moved by the story.

VMG3• 14 years ago

because it probably is not true

edit: it seems to be true in the sense that the guy wrote it in a book years ago http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/c/cabbie.htm

etfb2• 14 years ago

I think it probably is true, but there's not enough evidence either way to allow that to be a factor.

anatoly• 14 years ago

Because it isn't true. Because it's a hackneyed creation of a shallow imagination peopled with cardboard characters, made to press the emotional buttons especially popular today. Because real people don't say "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy". Because death and loneliness and loss and memory are all so much more than this Hallmark card of a story.

Because it's so fake, and so corny.

mortenjorck2• 14 years ago

The story brought to mind the movie Crash (2004). I remember thinking "wow, this is basically just manipulating me as a viewer to bring a tear to my eye" – and it worked, just as this story did.

lobster_johnson• 14 years ago

I agree that it at least seems fake. She's moving out her home at 02:30 AM to move into a hospice? They take a detour and she's two hours late, yet the orderlies are immediately around to assist her (presumably it's 04:30 AM now)? There are no details in the story, like place names, that would support the claim that it's a true story.

knieveltech2• 14 years ago

I'm going to take a moment to burn a little karma.

May you choke on your cynicism while you sleep.

Edit: what, no downvotes? Clearly I have no idea what motivates you people.

SkyMarshal2• 14 years ago

Because I get email forwards like this all the time, written by some bored political pr email hack on his lunch break just sharpening his craft (you know the guys who create those shady emails about Obama that get forwarded around right-wing circles).

Seriously, #1 on HN and it's not even remotely about hacking.

Flagged.

begemot3• 14 years ago

I'm unmoved by this sentimental drivel, and I think your urging to "please pause for a moment and ask yourself why" is the most pompous thing I have read on HN.

mxfh• 14 years ago

It's pretty obvious by that this is some egotistical generic write up. Do good things, don't brag with them, at least thats how I learned it.

blhack2• 14 years ago

Because its an overdone cliche? I think we've all heard this story 1000 times. I believe there was also recently a movie made about this story (or something like it. In the movie, it was an old man who was suicidal).

Not to discount it, just saying that not making you cry is t that bizarre.

tseabrooks2• 14 years ago

This story just sold a book.

Off topic question: I know many here aren't necessarily religious (Though some would say they are spiritual)... Do the non-religious among us still find value in the writing of overtly religious authors? I'm not interested in arguing about religion. I'm just curious if the HN crowd find value in the words of people with differing opinions.

carterschonwald2• 14 years ago

A person's values and opinions are not inextricably tied to their religiosity. I'm about as irreligious as is possible to be, but two of the nicest most intelligent and genuinely nice guys I know on the planet are respectively a devout Mormon and a guy who's a serious evangelical Christian who does ethnic Chinese American rap and last I checked is planning to attend seminary.

Point being, say no to monoculture, say yes to having interesting caring people who enrich those around them.

ReidZB• 14 years ago

Absolutely. Religion is a personal view, one that everyone decides. I can't fault anyone for their belief. I loved this story and I generally love whatever I read on this site.

For a non-religious person, death is an even sadder event than it is for the religious... because we view it as permanent.

tseabrooks2• 14 years ago

Right. My comment originated by wondering, "How many HNers would buy his book". His book, that contains this story, is overtly religious in nature. Is this story enough to make you interested in his book even though you know some of the content will be in fierce opposition with your own beliefs?

benjohnson• 14 years ago

>>because we view it as permanent

Given an infinite time and an infinite universes, there becomes a small possibility of existence again after death.

(I'm Christian, so I admit that I may be a bit more optimistic than is warranted)

dhimes2• 14 years ago

Yes. I believe in spiritual geniuses, like mathematical or literary geniuses. I believe that these people have figured out how, to put it simply, to get the most out of life, and I enjoy learning what they share. I believe Jesus and Siddhartha Guatama (Buddha) were two of these people.

swombat2• 14 years ago

I am non-religious, in the sense that I do not follow any organised religion, nor do I believe in the vast majority of the superstitions of many religions. I don't believe there is a God as described by the christians, muslims or jews, or supernatural beings as proposed by Hinduism, etc.

However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid.

Religion, religious texts, concepts of religion, and so on, have been a natural repository for boundless amounts of human wisdom accumulated over the centuries. Each religion, with all its flaws, is trying to grasp at an essential Truth of human existence. That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. Nor is it intelligent to ignore the fact that there have been numerous people throughout history whom one could call "enlightened", who touched on something beyond our normal existences.

There is a very deep well of value in religion. Those who spit in that well are to be pitied.

I'll close with an idea from Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher of the late 19th Century, who suggested that much of humanity's efforts (in the intellectual spheres) aim to reconcile the physical and the spiritual, to answer the question of how it is possible that there is matter and thinking (two apparently fundamentally different things), and how it is possible that there is such a thing as matter that thinks about its own nature.

He suggests that this striving to reconcile the two is split into three great movements: art, science and religion.

Dismissing one in favour of the other is like choosing to ignore your left leg in favour of your right. A complete human being will not ignore one of the three pillars of human thought.

mike-cardwell3• 14 years ago

Who dismisses religion as worthless? It obviously has both costs and benefits...

I don't think it's important to discuss how much religion is "worth". How much religion is "worth" bares no relation to how true it is. How true religion is, is the much more important discussion.

dhimes2• 14 years ago

The split among three structures (movements), art, science, and religion, is entirely a human construct. There is no split in actuality.

LinXitoW• 14 years ago

Aren't you describing philosophy instead of religion, in the sense that philosophy is thinking about it, while religion is extracting rules/guidelines and/or dogmas from those thoughts?

Also: Blind and stupid? Nothing against criticism, but i think something more neutral would be better, like short-sighted and willfully ignorant.

VMG3• 14 years ago

> That they fail to quite reach it (for most people) is obvious, but that doesn't make the attempt worthless.

Most of them are way off. Not even close.

yannickt6• 14 years ago

"However, I think that anyone who dismisses religion as worthless is blind or stupid."

We've learned a great deal about our world and our nature since the primary texts of the most established religions have been written. People who dismiss religion are not denying the value and wisdom in it, but are bringing to our attention that this wisdom is discoverable, and maybe better understood, outside of religion. More importantly, religion comes with dogma, which causes a great deal of harm and suffering. Much more relevant than "worth" is the fact that religion can be a very dangerous weapon in the hands of people who cannot dissociate the wisdom from the dogma.

mike-cardwell3• 14 years ago

An authors religion is irrelevant. If the content is good, it is good regardless. The only time I need to know an authors religion is if it's relevant to the topic at hand and I need to make a judgement on which way they might be biased.

DanielBMarkham2• 14 years ago

Yes. As long as they don't sound arrogant and cocky (I would say the same for reading atheist authors)

I really enjoyed David Bently Hart's defense of Christianity a few years ago. Thick material, but it was fascinating to hear several popular versions of historical events challenged by somebody well-educated. ( Affiliate link: http://amzn.to/IupRsn )

But after thinking about your question a bit more, it occurs to me that you might mean reading religious authors writing about religion. The answer here is also yes, at least for me. A few years ago I completed an audio course in Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition and it included several religious authors. This makes sense. Modern western intellectual thought has deep roots in Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem. Can't study the ancients without understanding what they believed and reading what they said in their own words.

loeschg• 14 years ago

Checking out that book. As a proclaimed Christ follower, I've recently found myself in discussions in which certain historical "facts" (I hesitated to put that in quotes) were tossed my direction which I felt unprepared to answer. As one who believes history to be a small thing to get caught up on given Christianity is about a lot more than that, I think it's very relevant and is a needed piece to intelligently discuss Biblical truth.

rokhayakebe• 14 years ago

I am currently going through the Greatest Books of Western Civilization (Still working on Plato's works), which I believe the audio sets are based on. I haven't gotten to the religious works yet and I literally cannot wait. If you have some writings, notes, that you would not mind sharing, please let me know.

Danieru• 14 years ago

The Mythical Man-Month's Fred Brooks is a devote Christian.

Dove• 14 years ago

So is Larry Wall.

mikeash3• 14 years ago

I don't care about a person's religion unless it negatively affects their words or actions. However, I don't see why you ask here, as I don't see anything religious in this story.

demallien2• 14 years ago

Well, that depends on the subject of the book. For example, "Ender's Game" is a great book that I really enjoyed reading, which had many good lessons in it. "Speaker for the Dead" on the other hand, by the same author, was one of the worst pieces of science fiction that I have ever read, largely because the author insisted on waving religion in the reader's face in a most unconvincing way. I've never met anyone as analytical and free-thinking as Ender that wasn't an atheist, so turning him into a practicing Catholic was really hard to swallow.

The worst offenders are self-help books. The moment the author starts rambling about spirituality, religion or other nonsense, it immediately destroys the author's credibility for me: how can I trust what someone is saying when they refuse to apply the rules of evidence to their world view? I'm forced to step back and evaluate what they are saying with more extreme scepticism, and in the end I'm left feeling like I may as well have just thought through the issues myself rather than reading the book (note, thinking for yourself is a good thing - but you don't need some dumb book filled with religious rubbish to give you permission to do it!)

pazimzadeh• 14 years ago

Can you elaborate? I don't remember the plot too clearly, but I count "Speaker for the Dead" as one of the books responsible for making me an atheist, as opposed to not having an opinion on the subject.

cobrausn2• 14 years ago

> I've never met anyone as analytical and free-thinking as Ender that wasn't an atheist...

Some of the most narrow-minded fools I've ever met have been atheists, and some of the most analytical have been religious. The reverse is also true. I'm reading a bit of confirmation bias in your observation.

cilo• 14 years ago

First off, my own anecdotal findings are that atheists are some of the best read people on religious subject matters. So I would say many of them have no qualms with reading religious themed work.

Secondly, at its core Zen Buddhism is more philosophy than religion. I'm an atheist and can still agree with most of the concepts found in Zen Buddhism. It's not about worshipping gods but more about the philosophical teachings of Siddhartha who most Zen Buddhist regards as having no particular supernatural powers.

I would hope most non religious people have no bias against it and if they do I would recommend they give that a second thought.

bendmorris• 14 years ago

Not just anecdotal. Atheists and agnostics score higher in tests of religious knowledge. See, for example, this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html

yason• 14 years ago

Depends on what they're writing about, of course. If the writings are religious, I'm quite allergic. Religion is a system of society, I'm not interested in that. On the other hand, if the writings reflect truths that aren't limited to a single religion or only some religions, and that can be found without subscribing to a religion, then certainly.

stitchy2• 14 years ago

I'm an Atheist, but I often find beauty in religious artwork, writing, or music. In fact, I find myself listening to Christian music fairly often. It's very difficult to divorce yourself from all things religious. We're constantly surrounded by it (next Christmas time, try putting yourself in the mindset of an Atheist.) As an Atheist I can either become embittered by that fact, or I can find value in it despite core differences. I choose the latter option. That said, I take issue with many religious concepts, hence the Atheism.

Rudism• 14 years ago

I generally find religious writings to be either neutral to my atheist sensibilities, or (in the case of scriptures or apologetics) sometimes quite fascinating. The only time it dips into the negative end of the scale is in the case of glurge.

kstenerud• 14 years ago

The only time I take exception to a religion or philosophy is when either it commands one to do evil, or when its adherents use it as an excuse to do evil. As for individuals, so long as they reject all evil commandments and retain their humanity, I will not criticize their choice in religion or philosophy.

paulsutter• 14 years ago

The central topic of Buddhism is psychology, understanding that most of the reasons that life is painful are within ourselves.

It's not a religion. It doesn't describe a god, nor does it preclude one. It isn't even a philosophy, because it doesn't tell you what you should or shouldn't do.

It really is psychology. And as an old programmer from way back, who has always been cynical about life and laughed at the hypocrisy and dogma in religion, I can say straight up that Buddhism is the most intelligent thing I have ever encountered.

swombat2• 14 years ago

Very moving story. There's something about death, about the ending of life, about the closing of a life, that puts things in perspective, that makes things which you normally consider important (like charging for a cab ride) seem so petty it is ridiculous to even consider them, and that makes simple anodine events take on what I can only call a divine aspect (without any connection to traditional religion).

These stories, these moments, are not just life, they're what life is about.

pantaloons• 14 years ago

"A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come."

tudorizer• 14 years ago

Where is this from?

steventruong• 14 years ago

Saw a slight different variation being shared on Facebook. Wonder why the difference if its a true story and who modified it...

sehugg• 14 years ago

This story has been cut-and-pasted countless times: https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...

ChrisSteel• 14 years ago

For anyone who can't get to the site (I guess a bandwidth issue), you can get the article off google cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wznsub_...

pjmlp• 14 years ago

Nice story

iamdann• 14 years ago

Every year I grow older brings a new understanding of the concept of nostalgia. Driving through an old neighborhood, even just 5 or 10 years later, can hit like a ton of bricks.

I can't even imagine what that taxi ride must have been like for her.

StacyC2• 14 years ago

That's exactly what occurred to me as I read the story.

I graduated from college 20 years ago, and a few years back I drove through the old neighborhoods there and something just blasted me in the gut, or heart, or something. A flood of memories of friends and lovers and struggles and parties and fun and hurt and everything.

What is that? Is it a realization of time passed, or opportunities missed, never to be available to us again?

I can't imagine what it would be life after 80 years or so, and knowing that the door of life is closing quickly. Wow. Didn't mean to wax sentimental but I do love these ideas.

timjahn2• 14 years ago

"Didn't mean to wax sentimental"

Don't be ashamed. It's appreciated.

thekungfuman• 14 years ago

Weird coincidence; by the end of the story something had gotten in my eyes. Excuse me.

taylonr• 14 years ago

Yeah, it's either really dusty or someone in the office is cutting onions.

cpt1138• 14 years ago

Seems like the tl;dw version of "Trip to Bountiful"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090203/

razibog• 14 years ago

This made me burst out in tears. I rarely post here, but i felt this had to be said.

anateus• 14 years ago

What I took away from the story wasn't so much related to death, but rather its great visceral conveying of the point of the golden rule. The author says he treated her like he would want his mother to be treated. Many of us apply these sorts of rules, but we tend to do it much more rigorously with people close to us, because they are already more similar, and thus fit easier within the "do unto others" formulation (whether you use the positive or negative).

It isn't great moments that catch us unaware as he says, it's that our life is a constant stream of such moments, usually unbeknownst to us. It's only occasionally that we realize the sort of impact we have on those around us.

This story reminds me to continue applying these principles (within certain limits, the golden rule isn't a moral panacea) to every interaction, including the most incidental. The feelings expressed in the story are exactly the sort from which I derive my compassion and which I use as the intuitive component of my ethical reasoning. It reminds me to consider the side-effects of not just my actions, but also how I express my internal states to others.

joeblau• 14 years ago

Thank you for the tl;dr review.

pbreit4• 14 years ago

I always preferred "The Platinum Rule": Treat others as _they_ would like to be treated.

scarmig• 14 years ago

The Platinum Rule, however, derives from the the Golden Rule. The reason to treat others as they would like to be treated is because (1) you want others to treat you as you want to be treated and (2) you should do unto others etc.

PakG16• 14 years ago

That rule breaks down if it isn't qualified. What if the way they want to be treated isn't good for them? Especially in the case of immature people (and especially immature children). A simple example: always giving a kid a ton of candy whenever they want is hardly treating them well.

How we should treat others is rarely an easy-to-discern topic. Lot of room for error there. We could say, "oh, but it's assuming they know what they're doing; or, oh, it's assuming they're a normal functioning person; etc". But the fact is, in life, a lot of people don't know what they're doing. They struggle with their relationships, their finances, and their very purpose of life. Whether it's a high school sophomore desperate for friends or a successful, rich guy with a mid-life crisis, we all have moments of weakness where we make irrational decisions and have irrational desires.

Building on that point, further complicating matters is that people often don't know what they want, often including how they want to be treated. Oh, we know it usually means that people want respect, love, money, happiness, whatever. But what does it mean at a tactical level that actually gives us the insight for how to treat them well? Was my mom really jealous of me getting a box of cookies for a friend instead of her (long story), or did she just wish we could hang out more together before I left again for my new home? Well, turns out that although she was jealous of the cookies, she didn't care about the cookies at all. She wanted to spend time with me. Now, how is a normal person who sucks at conflict resolution supposed to pick up on that? It took me 30 minutes of talking with her.

I really think that this rule is useless, unless one is some kind of prophet who can see into people's innermost hearts. It offers little real-world tactical advice. You might argue that the Golden Rule doesn't either, but I'd say it's much easier to implement, and much more difficult to screw up. And as the other guy notes, this Platinum Rule would derive from the Golden Rule anyway.

alecco16• 14 years ago

The golden rule has a serious problem of enabling sociopaths.

Only help people worth helping.

drumdance• 14 years ago

Meh. Only something like 5% of the population is sociopathic. As long as you take reasonable precautions, it's okay to treat most people you meet as if they're one of the other 95%.

jwb119• 14 years ago

you're making some pretty big assumptions that: 1) you can actually tell who is worth helping 2) even if the golden rule does enable sociopaths, that the overall benefits don't outweigh that downside

lancefisher• 14 years ago

People like to argue against the golden rule, saying that if you are deranged, it gives you license to hurt others. First, this is an edge case. Second, it is out of context.

The golden rule was given by Jesus secondary to the command "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

If you follow both those commands, you'll only do good to your fellow man.

jasonwatkinspdx• 14 years ago

Neglecting abusers perpetuates abuse.

idleloops• 14 years ago

It's nice to get the appropriate response when it's needed.

I once had a flat on my bike, and tried for about 20 minutes to flag down cyclists (on a busy route) that I could see had a pump (I didn't have one, but I had a new tube). Eventually someone that passed turned back rather reluctantly - then stated they'd go home and fetch me a pump as they'd experienced a good deed the night before. They left and then returned to assist when others just tried their best to ignore me. Kindness has a habit of spreading.

VMG3• 14 years ago

and HN's signal-to-noise ratio is lowered once again

SkyMarshal2• 14 years ago

Agreed. Flag it.

benologist• 14 years ago

This doesn't look like spam at all....

https://www.google.com/search?q=Because+I+drove+the+night+sh....

SatvikBeri• 14 years ago

This is by the actual author though, at least according to http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/c/cabbie.htm

mortenjorck2• 14 years ago

I'm going to guess this story has been Mike Daisey'd.

The author quite likely did work as a cabbie, did pick up an elderly woman on her final trip to hospice care, and did make an unexpected detour around town to look at some landmarks from her life.

It probably also happened in the middle of the day, only took about half an hour, and the patient probably didn't say "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy," because she fell asleep near the end of the ride.

This is sad, because, just like Mike Daisey's story, there's plenty of value in what really transpired, and by exaggerating it, it loses its believability. By becoming overly sentimental, bordering on mawkish, it loses the impact that a frank, thoughtful reflection on the actual event could have had.

pbreit4• 14 years ago

What are you showing with that search? That the story (apparently true), has been posted in various places?

horsehead• 14 years ago

Very touching story. I got a chance to ride with a taxi driver for a night one time -- those guys have really interesting jobs. It's kind of like being a cop, except without carrying the gun (Though i think some do carry). Never know who you'll pick up for a ride.

rg31415• 14 years ago

I feel as though he should have taken the money from her. There was nobody to leave her money to.

kingkawn• 14 years ago

I feel as though you missed the point.

StacyC2• 14 years ago

There was nobody to leave her money to.

1. The beautiful moral of the story is a split-finger fastball that you never saw coming.

2. Maybe she had heirs who would receive her assets upon her passing.

JshWright3• 14 years ago

I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to interact with many people in a similar way.

I'm a volunteer EMT with the ambulance service in my town, with several 'assisted living' facilities in our district. My rough guess would be that 25-30% of the folks we take to the hospital are in the last year of their life, and likely will spend the rest of their days in the facility where we picked them up (with occasional 'field trips' to the ER).

While it's popular to complain about these sorts of calls (they certainly lack the excitement of a car wreck, or the glamour of saving a child), I generally enjoy them. Even in the grips of dementia, many of these people have fascinating stories to tell. We're stuck together in the back of the truck for 20 minutes... I can either get a head start on my paperwork, or I can engage them in conversation. In the past month, I've met a WW2 bomber pilot (who flew in a pathfinder squadron) and a former Rockette (plus a schoolteacher, a librarian, a surveyor, and several others I'm sure I've forgotten). I learned something from each of them (well... most of them... grumpy old people are still grumpy...).

The statement "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated," really rang home for me. I've heard that same sentiment (practically verbatim, just s/passengers/patients/) from several providers, all of whom I regard very highly. I think it's one of the best predictors of someone's ability as an EMS provider. While I know a few extremely capable medics who have a lousy bedside manner, every medic I know who seems to genuinely care about their patients is a top-notch medical provider.

timjahn2• 14 years ago

Thanks for sharing and contributing in a positive way to this post, and the overall story.

Beats all the other grumps down below complaining about how this has nothing to do with hacking or technology.

I think the grumps should start thinking about where they'd want the cab driver to drive them during those two hours.

begemot3• 14 years ago

As long as we are dictating what other people should be thinking about here is a quote from the late great James Baldwin I think you should mull over.

'Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel...the mask of cruelty'

blhack2• 14 years ago

Can you give any advice in becoming a volunteer emt? I've wanted to do this, but have no idea how to start...

JshWright3• 14 years ago

Do you live in an area served by a volunteer agency?

In my case, I'm actually a volunteer firefighter/EMT with my local fire department, which also runs the ambulance.

The first step would simply be to call your local agency.

ljlolel2• 14 years ago

You have to get licensed as an EMT, I took this course, it's very good: https://www.cpc.mednet.ucla.edu/cpc/course/emt

You can transfer licensure between states.

euphoria83• 14 years ago

You made me cry.

re_todd• 14 years ago

As the great Jack Handey of Deep Thoughts once said, "It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."

rickmode2• 14 years ago

Meta question: how is this related to hacker news (related to technology or science)?

lotharbot• 14 years ago

The guidelines quite clearly state that HN stories don't have to be related to tech/science:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

on the other hand:

"If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

Now that you know the criteria, I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions as to whether this story belongs.

alecco16• 14 years ago

This cheap feel-good fictional story did not gratify my intellectual curiosity.

And it sparked a religion flamewar in the comments.

julsonl• 14 years ago

I feel that this article is suitable to HN, not for its actual content, but for the intelligent discussions that eventually spring out of it.

andywood• 14 years ago

I count at least three poignant lessons related to entrepreneurship, concerning the value of persistence, chance encounters, and courtesy.

rickmode2• 14 years ago

I can see that. It isn't explicit, but it is there.

Evgeny• 14 years ago

Some hackers may come here to read stories similar to this one.

darksaga• 14 years ago

Real or not, it's still a very powerful piece of literature. I think there's an underlying theme to the story - a lot of our history is being lost or superseded by the internet.

There's so many things we have left to learn from "The Greatest Generation" yet when given the opportunity, most would rather downplay the story, or simply go back their smartphones social networks.

wildmXranat• 14 years ago

I'm not going to lie, I teared up half way through the article. Rather than contemplate the fact of it being real or not, I'll spend some time drawing more meaningful conclusions.

MPSimmons• 14 years ago

Damnit. There's not supposed to be crying at Hacker News.

gwillen• 14 years ago

This is the second time I've seen this story this week, and this version is subtly different from the previous one I saw. This is making me wonder whether either version of the story actually happened. I wish I remembered where I saw the other one.

emperorcezar• 14 years ago

I've seen it about a dozen times in a dozen different forms in as many years.

calciphus• 14 years ago

It's reads like a creative writing piece, and is taken from a book about living with the prayer of Saint Francis. I don't believe it's meant to have literally happened, so much as to convey a lesson.

mynameishere• 14 years ago

If you ever sat through a sermon by a competent preacher, they're just loaded with scripted stories like this. No cab driver is going to throw away a day's pay out of sentiment.

KVFinn• 14 years ago

Wow, that was way better than I expected. Damn onions.

siculars• 14 years ago

Best story I've heard in a bit. Thank you for sharing.

jwdunne• 14 years ago

It's an incredible story and it moved me greatly. It also appears to have moved many more people around the globe once again. I've just noticed my mum share this exact story on Facebook and she's very far removed from Hacker News (it appears to be part of a note).

pcfree• 14 years ago

I'm certain that I read this or a similar short story in high school but i can't remember much else about it. it's funny how the short stories and books i read in high school are so much more recallable than things learned in the other classes.

ricardobeat• 14 years ago

What an interesting coincidence. Just minutes ago I watched a short film with a similar story: https://vimeo.com/40846220

dot-sean• 14 years ago

This guy posted it to his google+ page, without crediting original author. Let's make sure we +1 it so his friends know where his great ideas come from:

https://plus.google.com/104314192726025938964/posts/4GjXTPTz...

The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget

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