‘Life is nothing but a big rideshare’
Lately, I’ve seen changes in my friend.
The older Bob Reilly gets, it seems, the more pronounced the symptoms of a mysterious condition inhabiting his durable frame. It’s called FOMA — fear of missing out. Like that German shepherd unleashing a ferocious bark, hopefully, from behind a stockade fence, Bob will merrily chew on any bone, as long as the aim is the ascendance of the human spirit. His infectious joy and laughter helps make that happen.
“If I feel something stirring, if I have a pitch,” he promises. “I’ll walk in the front door and politely ask to see the right person. It’s woven in my DNA, my background in sales.”
Then, in a teasing way, I’ll correct him. “Walk through the front door? Your style is more along the lines of smashing through the entrance while driving an M1 Abrams tank. Provided, of course, Ukraine isn’t using all of ours.”
Like switching from conventional to synthetic motor oil, things gelled.
Energized by the endless parade of narratives wafting from the back seat while driving for Uber and Lyft, Reilly hatched a plan.
Applying his sharp organizational skills and effusive personality, he meticulously catalogued a trove of his favorite accounts from the more than 25,000 passengers he transported during a span of seven-years to craft “Rideshare by Robert: Every Ride’s a Short Story,” published by Book Locker.
Bob’s book takes root as a colorfully lush garden of shortstory essays, presented in a journalistic format. “The concept came to me after four months of driving. The diverse range of stories, insights, reflections, and revelations were all birthed from this basic premise.”
As he rolled up the miles, it didn’t take Bob long to see a pattern emerge: Weekend rides often involved marijuana and alcohol. And dangerously chilling urban back alleys saturated
with weapons and drug deals. On a lighter note, even a few marriage proposals.
One time, Bob was waiting in the car as his passenger stood outside to finish “whatever he was smoking.” When the guy finally hopped in the car, “a cloud of thick smoke filled the car.” Then he passed out. The event inspired Bob, a longtime musician and lyricist, to write a song.
“You need a ride, so I picked you up
Right outside the bar You took your last hit when you opened the door
Then you exhaled in my car
I got a second-hand buzz
I got a second-hand buzz.”
Another tale, this one touching, centers on a frail man on a walker. “He breathed heavily,” Bob reported. “We immediately connected and began our conversation as we headed toward the dialysis center.” The man was in the throes of kidney transplant and dialysis, complicated after he lost his job and health insurance.” He was unable to afford the $400 for his kidney rejection medicine, so he discontinued the medication. Bob says, “We blessed each other, hugged, and smiled. The human spirit is something to behold.”
Spending time with total strangers in such an intimate space presents itself in a penetrating way, says Bob, one of nine children born to a close-knit Irish-italian family. It’s a big world out there. All of a sudden, it was taking place in my car!” he enthuses, energy and wonder cascading from each syllable.
But he wasn’t always ferrying clients from one place to another. My friend worked for 35 years as an executive in the global supply chain sector. Steeped in America’s button-down culture, “formality was key to success,” he recalls. “I came up in a time if you brought your authentic self to work, you’d be looking for another job! It took the rideshare experience to transition me into that place that gave me the freedom to be a human being among fellow human beings. My conversations were real with real people. It was a profound reinvention.”
Armed with a diary — and drawing deeply on his way with words, Bob developed and fine-tuned a system of recording observations in the diary. He updated it between rides and in his spare time.
Back in college, he flirted with the dream of majoring in anthropology. While he eventually decided against it — “I didn’t “dig” archeological anthropology” — I was stirred by the idea of becoming a cultural anthropologist. I was intrigued by societies and distant cultures from a very young age.”
In the end, he chose business as a major. However, he kept his sensibilities on high alert, keenly eavesdropping and digesting the mercurial and multilayered rhythms of humankind.
Bob has learned a lot in his reliable little Honda. The compressed atmosphere interior serves much like an incubator, a thermometer tracking the highs and lows revealed over a 20-minute or a twohour ride. “Everybody’s immortal. Everyone of us is an eternal soul. We just happen to be housed in a body.”
He adds: “Life is nothing but a big rideshare. At some point, the ride ends. But a lot of profound things can happen during the ride. Like life itself.”
Then this: “When someone with a heavy accent knocks on my window, saying ‘Robert Reilly? Is that you?’ All of a sudden every corner of the world was not only at my doorstep, it was in my car!”
There’s no reason to sugarcoat things. While my friend long ago stepped away from the pressure cooker life in the global supply chain, one thing becomes inimitably clear: The global supply chain is now as close as his back seat.
The human condition in full flower.