Judd Hirsch had it right.

In the first episode of the TV series "Taxi", he said that he was a cab driver. Everybody else in the shop was something else – boxer, actor, artist, something. Me, I'm a cab driver.

I was in my Junior year of college and studying for Finals. I was trying to bone up for an advanced Philosophy class, which was my Major, and suddenly realized that the book I was reading was utter, total, complete bullshit.

Once I understood that, I thought about the other Philosophy books I'd read – and knew that once I'd gotten past the true classics such as Socrates, Plato, des Carte, Kant, Kirkegaard, and even Ayn Rand, the rest of it was so much people blowing smoke; either to try and justify their salaries, or believing their own publicity.

When I understood that "modern" philosophy deserved the low opinion most people have of the subject, I packed up the little bit of stuff I had at school and dropped out. I simply couldn't see any point to busting my butt to get a degree in something that had come to have virtually nothing to do with the reality that most people live.

The thing was, I still had an interest – a passion, even – in philosophy; just not the modern crap they were trying to teach me in college. So I thought about all the different jobs that I could get that would let me meet a wide variety of different people from a wide variety of different lifestyles, occupations, races, religions, and so on. I considered a lot of different jobs: cop, barber, bartender, and so on, but I finally settled on being a cab driver.

Starting out, I was "the New Guy", of course. I got the crappy cabs, the crappy hours, the crappy fares: I've made my share of runs to get a bleeding gunshot or knifing victim from some dive of a bar to the hospital. Sometimes I got them there in time; other times, not. Either way, I caught shit from the other drivers when I was cleaning out the back of the cab back in the shop.