Sometimes I am totally oblivious…

She said I was the chattiest cab driver she had ever come across. Imagine that, 3:30AM and I'm chatty.

I gestured turning a key next to my mouth and said, “I can 'tick-a- lock' if you want peace and quite.”

"No, no.” she said, “It’s great, I need to stay awake and this will do it. You're doing great."

Usually it's not hard to tell if someone wants to ride in quite. Some of the less subtle signals include burying their head in whatever they are reading.

Or they twist their body ninety (90) degrees away from me and contort into the furthest corner of the back seat making themselves as small as possible.

They stare out window and cover their mouth with one hand while talking into their phone. The phone might be real or imagined; after all, it's California.

Or they polity ask me to turn off the radio. After I explain that there is no radio in the car, they say, "I know."

Snoring is a dead give away! It screams 'silence is golden.'

Anyway, you get the idea. It's just not that hard to catch on, but sometimes I'm just oblivious and yammer on and on.

It's not like there are not other things I can do (besides talking) to occupy my time and interest while driving.

Watching the road and driving as safely as possible is, of course, my highest priority. Getting all passengers (and myself) safely and expeditiously from point A to point B is critically important.

As a side note, safety and my pocketbook are the two main reasons why I ignore those requests to 'follow that car', 'step on it', 'go ahead and run the light'. Even when they say, "I'll make it worth your wild. I promise!"

What exactly is 'worth your wild?' Last time I went to the bank and tried to deposit 'worth your wild' and the bank teller was mystified. Well, I digress.

I also try to keep my eye on live traffic reports via sigalert.com . I plan ahead so I can make adjustments as LA traffic inevitably stacks up.

I try to keep an eye on my passengers, just in case they need an extra helping hand. Just the other day a passenger was having difficulty un-wrapping the gum I had provided moments earlier. Of course, I wanted to help the damsel in distress so I offered to help adding, "Heck, I'm only driving!"

Okay, that was funny then and it still makes me giggle now -- even if I say so myself!!

The list of things I can do to keep myself quite while driving seems endless. I guess the real problem is that's just not my nature.

So if I pick you up and you want peace and quite - just lay your head back close your eyes and snore three times.

I'll take the hint...