Ruthlessness And Religion

A few nights ago, my wife Lydia and I went out to dinner at a restaurant down the street from  our residence.  About halfway through the meal Lydia got a small piece of shrimp shell stuck in her throat. She wasn't  choking, but it was painful and hard for her to swallow  The nearby clinics that could have taken care of her were  already closr the evening, so that left only one alternative--a trip to a hospital ER, the closest of which is about 5km (3 miles) from our area.

Just our luck it was a rainy evening, and taxis were hard to come by, but we finally got one. However, due to the cab scarcity, the driver  took  advantage of  our situation and demanded a high flat rate  instead of running the meter. Under the under the circumstances we had no choice but to accept.
 

Just as we got in and the driver was about to  pull into traffic, he crossed himself, which is a common  gesture here in the Philippines among devout Catholics beseeching God's protection at the start of a journey. 
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A couple of blocks into the trip, Lydia suddenly coughed, which dislodged the shell, so no  need for the  ER after all. Even  the driver said something to the effect that  God is good. So we turned around and went home. However,  traffic was so heavy that the metered fare wouldn't have been much more than the driver's demanded amount anyway. So we paid it. And all things considered, we were just so glad that Lydia was okay that the fare wasn't worth arguing about. But the point is if the cabbie was so pious, he had a strange way of showing it by exploiting an urgent matter to squeeze extra money from his passengers. I can't help but wonder how much more he would have socked it to us if our need had been really dire.

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