You Hate Yourself, Don't You

Recently, in New York, I called a taxi-cab. It was obvious that the driver was jittery. He stopped for a moment, in the traffic, and he seemed to think that the driver in the taxi next to us had come too close, so he leaned out the window and swore at him vehemently. As we came to intersections it seemed as though he was making a deliberate effort to run down pedestrians.

We stopped at the door of a street-car as it opened, and my driver cursed the man at the controls. After a few moments I said to the driver, “You certainly hate yourself, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” I said: “I mean exactly what I say. I have never met a man who hates himself as much as you do.” “I don’t hate myself.”

“Of course you do. You despise yourself. No man could be so disagreeable with other people unless he hated himself. I don’t know what your problem is, but something is burning you up inside.”

He said nothing for a moment. That was a decided relief. He didn’t ever tell me what his problem was, but just as I reached my destination he said: “You know, mister, you got something there.

You put your finger on my trouble, I guess. I am going to think about it.”