Yesterday I was faced with this question. And not in the sense of “When is it safe to jump from a moving vehicle?”, but rather, in what kind of situations justifies jumping from a moving vehicle?
I’ll tell you what happened to me yesterday and you can judge for yourself…
I worked a bit later that usual yesterday, and by work late a meant coding the dying sequence of the enemies in my game! Yip…they die and there is blood everywhere. … anyway…I’m digressing.
So not wanting to wait 20 minutes for a train and another 20 minutes for a bus, I decided to catch a cab. (Not physically running after it…). I got in the cab and the driver was having a massive argument with someone over the phone…I mumbled where I wanted to go and he kept arguing.
So I sat there in silence and let my wife know that I’m on my way home. The text was “I’m in a cab”…followed by “It stinks”. She gave me some sound advice in return…”Hold your breath”. Still contemplating what she meant by that I sat there in silence.
Suddenly the cab driver (who finished arguing) turned his attention to me. “Sorry sir, I was on the phone with my brother. You see, there is something wrong with my stomach and I got blood in my stool…” …. WTF!!!! My response … “Ooo”.
So he continued: “What field do you work in”. My answer was short as you might have learnt, I don’t like talking to people I don’t know : “computers”.
That did not stop him; “So do you know what could be the cause?”…”, trying to divert the conversation I said “probably not”. He continued again :”…of blood in stool…you know…what causes it?” … I was now trying to hold my breath as my wise wife said in the hope of passing out. “No, no, I don’t …no medical experience at all. Never had biology, can’t help you whatsoever..” was my answer at last…He then nodded and offered me a drink of water. “Do you want some water, I carry this bottle around”. I managed to say through my astonishment “I’m fine, ..thanks…”
So we sat in silence while I was looking for a soft landing.
Close to home he was on the phone again in a language I luckily didn’t understand. But my great mind started to decipher what he was talking about…since he spelt it out in English to the person on the other side of the phone… it went along the lines of “bla bla bla blood in stool,…blood in stool, bla bla S-T-O-O-L,….O-O-L, bla bla bla.”
I told the cab to stop so my landing will be softer, paid really quickly and ran…I think my last words to him was “good luck with that”.
Next time, here is a reference card:
