JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Maybe it’s my enormous head that makes me look like an information booth or the Navigator in Dune, because people are always asking me for directions. This is funny because I can’t point north and I can’t estimate distances—I’ll say something is nearby, and it turns out to be ten blocks away. Today I had on my giant spectacles, so I looked like a lighthouse. I was standing outside Unimart in Greenhills, waiting for a cab, when a white-haired lady walked up to me and asked me if I spoke Spanish. I took 12 units of Spanish in college so the answer is No, but I’ve seen lots of Mexican movies so I can understand about ten words. So the lady and I conversed in Spanglish. She said she had been looking for her driver for an hour and she couldn’t reach him on her mobile phone, and she’d asked various people at the mall for assistance, but couldn’t make herself understood. So I called her driver and when he appeared with the car she offered me a lift. Which was nice, because sometimes when I’m waiting for a taxi, people leap out of their cars and ask me to sign their books or the backs of receipts or something, then after avid declarations of fealty they jump back into their cars and drive away. I’m not jumping into strangers’ cars, but they’re supposed to make the offer. It’s basic human.