Another Man Might Have Been Angry

It took a while, but she looked in the mirror

Then she glanced at the license for my name

A smile seemed to come to her slowly

It was a sad smile, just the same…

suggested Harry Chapin in his lyrical and poignant 1972 “60 % biographically true” song about lovers being reunited by chance years down the road. Sue is wealthy, Harry is driving a cab. Sue is pretending to be happy, Harry clearly not. The songwriter is convinced that Sue’s true calling would have been acting. Harry is clear that he would rather have been a pilot.

Oh, I’ve got something inside me

To drive a princess blind

There’s a wild man, wizard, he’s hiding in me

Illuminating my mind

Oh, I’ve got something inside me

Not what my life’s about

‘Cause I’ve been letting my outside tide me

Over ’til my time runs out

Harry feels he could have done better. Which is kinda tragic if you think about it. Opportunities lost. The road not taken. Not only did Harry underperform career-wise, he also messed up with the love of his life, letting his one and only soul mate wander off and marry some rich dude who clearly doesn’t know her, care for her, love her the way Harry would have.

Maybe I’ve grown cynical in addition to curmudgeonly, but I’m not so sure. You think the young couple would have been happy living on the salary of a cab driver? Or the income of an airline pilot for that matter? Sue was destined for bigger if not better things. How long would this romance have lasted, Sue coming home discouraged from auditions, Harry away from their over-priced, miniscule apartment—rents in San Francisco were far above the national average—on overnight flights. I’m not a marriage counselor but I have been told that “cooking lasts, kissing don’t.” Passion in one thing, commitment quite another. “I give them six months. Three, if she cooks.” remarks the inimitable Dianne Wiest in Parenthood. I’m just not sure Harry and Sue would have made it in the long term.

I’m not advocating that Harry make his peace with his current circumstance, that he should somehow wake up and find making an honest living driving a cab in San Francisco fulfilling. But thinking that he can be content is is a tad naïve. Harry has passions. His aches and urges will not be extinguished by any professional appointment or success.

There was not much more for us to talk about

Whatever we had once was gone

So I turned my cab into the driveway

Past the gate and the fine trimmed lawns

Forgive me, but I’m wondering if what they had once would still be gone had they found a way to stay together. The number of young romancers who are still together decades later is inversely proportional to the ones who think they will. Life has a way of happening when we least expect it. Do you know any married couples who are still making out in the backseat on their silver anniversary? I don’t either.

And she said, we must get together

But I knew it’d never be arranged

And she handed me twenty dollars for a two fifty fare

She said, “Harry, keep the change.

Kinda a dig, gotta say. A little condescending, rubbing Harry’s face in the disparity between Sue’s economic circumstances and his. Harry could have been gracious, said “my pleasure, good to see you, no charge.” Instead, he just ends up with a double sawbuck with which he can buy groceries or pot.

Well another man might have been angry

And another man might have been hurt

But another man never would have let her go

I stashed the bill in my shirt

Don’t get me wrong. I loved and still love Harry Chapin’s Taxi. When I first heard the song 50-something years ago, my heart broke for the missed chance, for true love squandered. But I now feel strongly that Harry and Sue would have been in marriage counseling before the birth of their first child, that Harry would now be living in even more reduced circumstances, trying to support two households. Even on a pilot’s salary, it would be tough to pay private school tuition. Taxi’s lyrics still move me. But I no longer feel for Harry the way I once did.

Which brings me, “finally” it could be argued, to my point about parenting for this week.

How many older parents have no regrets about the decisions they made when their kids were growing up? How many of us can look back and say, “yeah, I got it right each and every time I made a judgement about my child’s school, bedtime, diet, playmates, schedule”? How many of us feel that we were just the right amount of strict, found the right balance of being understanding?

It’s hard to think about long range parenting strategies with the vagaries of homework, carpool, schedules, and the ongoing logistical struggle that is parenting in 2024. I wouldn’t guess that next year is going to be any better or much easier. Yogi Berra said, “it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future” but I’m suggesting that the bullies aren’t going to disappear, that our schools and streets aren’t going to be any safer. If your child’s classmates are concerned about boots on the doorstep and their parents being disappeared in the middle of the night, attending to the assigned reading and working assiduously on the yearbook with your kid aren’t going to be priorities. But if my view of Taxi can change over the decades, wouldn’t now be a good time to think deeply about the level of strictness in your home. I bet looking back, you’ll wish you had been more understanding and less sure that your opinions would never change. Now is the time to take a break from focusing on the future achievements of your beloved children. Why not take a day off and just hang out with your kids, no agenda. You could even play a few songs for them, the ones that had meaning for you when you were their age.

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