Why you should memorize your cab number

I’ll start with the more innocuous (though no less harrowing) of the two stories that make it imperative that you ALWAYS memorize your cab number when you get in for a ride.

I was wrapping up a weekend trip to Austin, and some friends and I decided to share a cab to the airport. Because there were three of us, and there wasn’t enough room for my backpack, I placed it on the front passenger seat.

The ride to the airport didn’t take long, and pretty soon we were in line to get boarding passes. Which is when I realized that I had never picked up my backpack (which contained my laptop, amongst other valuables) from the cab. The feeling that hit me next was sickening – you know the one. Your head starts spinning, and no sooner does the world come back into focus that your stomach drops through to your groin. Anger hit next – anger for being an idiot and not being able to do something as simple as keeping track of my belongings.

Once I was somewhat more composed, I asked my friends what cab company our taxi was part of. Blank stares.

“Guys was it yellow, white, what?”

Blank stares. We didn’t even remember the color of the taxi, let alone the company name or the cab number. I ran out of the terminal, hoping beyond hope that the cab driver had realized he still had my bag, and had decided to wait curbside. No such luck. Instead, I ran into one of the people that are always yelling at you to move your car because the nation is at a perpetual Code Orange. Thankfully, the person I found was a nice lady who started calling the main taxi dispatch lines to see if a driver had reported the missing backpack. I was then put in touch with the airport lost and found department, which also came up empty. As I began to mentally reconstruct the gigabytes of personal information on my laptop, and whether it was worth taking a later flight so that I could recover my bag, one of my friends grabbed my attention.

“Did you hear that?” he asked. “What?” I replied. “Your name – they’re calling your name on the PA system.”

Breathless, we ran back into the terminal to the airline counter, where sure enough a lady cop, my backpack in her hand, was trying to locate me through the public announcement system. Amazed at my good fortune, I thanked God, and then offered to hug the cop. Then I thought better of it, since as a general rule, you don’t want to be excessively emotionally expressive around people who carry guns.

So the cab driver who had dropped us off turned out to be a good Samaritan, and left my bag with airport security. Still, if I had memorized the four digit, unique cab number in the first place, I could have had taxi dispatch instantly locate the cab and put me in touch with the driver.

So memorize that number next time you get in a cab.