When we made plans for the boys to attend FSY at BYU, we figured we would drop them off at campus and then make the drive home. (Having spent the week before in Utah while they were at tennis camp.) The plan was for them to spend the week in Utah and then take the FrontRunner train up to Salt Lake Airport and fly home. They’ve never flown by themselves, but it was a direct flight and they were confident they could manage the train and plane. Perfect.
And then we realized days before dropping them off that the Saturday train schedule wouldn’t work because of how early they would need to catch their flight. The next best option was to set up a Teen Uber account and pay for a trip to the airport. I’ve never sent my kids in an Uber without me and oddly enough, I felt a little more comfortable with the train! But with three boys, Hunter, Bennett and a friend, I figured they could probably keep themselves safe.
The day before they were to fly home, Hunter prebooked his Uber ride – I received a notification of the trip and confirmed who would be driving him. I checked again right before I went to bed to make sure everything was set and I saw the driver had been updated to a new guy. Great.
The next morning I woke up to a text…
“You’re not going to believe who our Uber driver was?”
I saw a picture of the guy just a few hours before and there wasn’t anything familiar about his face.
And then a picture came through.
What are the chances that our old neighbor was their driver?! Which was not the first or even the second driver that was assigned to their trip. There’s no way he would have ever recognized Hunter because he moved when Hunter was probably 7 years old, so I was curious as to how they made the connection.
I didn’t know this, but evidently Teen Uber drivers have guidelines as to what they can and can’t ask while driving teens – they know their first names from their account but can’t ask their last names. But the driver knew they had been at BYU for the week (that’s where he picked them up) and he learned they were traveling back home to Mesa, AZ. Hunter talked about the sports he was playing and the driver shared that his kids attended high school in Mesa as well. It didn’t take long to realize they likely had someone in common and Hunter willingly provided his last name to finalize the connection. The driver started laughing when he informed Hunter he used to live in the house across the street and two doors down from us. (He even had a conversation with Steve not too long ago.) Hunter even recalled giving his daughter a rose on her 16th birthday – he was probably in kindergarten but we have a picture of it which always solidifies the memory.
They were able to chat the whole way to the airport. What could have been an uncomfortable drive was actually quite pleasant!
And I was grateful for the positive experience.
The world is far too large, and the odds far too unlikely, to not recognize a tender mercy when I see it.
