A few weeks back, I went to Downtown Seattle with my niece and my girlfriend for a night out. It had been a long week, and we all needed to unwind. After an extensive pre-funk session—complete with my customary two drink maximum—we called an Uber and got Karyn. She was a sweet and kind lady, very talkative and friendly, but what made her memorable was a litany of rubber duck characters, lined up in a row across her dashboard.

“I get them from the Denny’s by the airport,” she said when asked about them. “There’s a claw machine that you pay a dollar, and it won’t let you leave until you win something. I got a rubber duck the first time, then the next time I got another one, and next thing you know, I have a bunch of them across the dashboard.”

The ducks came in a myriad of personalities, from surfers and teddy bears to national monuments (The Statue of Liberty, for one), and are a hit with her riders. “Some of the drunk ones late at night will come up with stories for them,” she said. “Like the surfer dude duck and the librarian duck have a thing going on in secret, or things like that.”

As one would expect, the ducks are a hit with kids as well. “Occasionally, a kid will ask if they can have one. It’s fine. When they do, I just go get a new one to replace it.” That kindness is reciprocated as some of her regulars, who have become her friends, will look out for her. “I have one guy who tracks my phone,” she said, though she insisted it wasn’t creepy. “He looks out for me, lets me know when there’s stuff going on downtown. He warned me of when that crane fell a few weeks back, and I was able to adjust my route.”

Karyn clearly enjoys what she does, and that joy spreads to whomever she picks up. Her and the rubber ducks got a five-star rating from me.

PS: I think the surfer duck and the librarian duck should go to the Statue of Liberty on vacation. Just saying.

#2019 #Seattle #nightlife #Uber #fun #writing #author #interesting