How to hail a cab in the city

By Maggie Beidelman

I got off the Caltrain at 4th and King Streets only to realize that I didn't even know how to hail a cab.

I'd come a long way from my comfortable suburban home, where squirrels skitter across grassy knolls and white picket fences keep out unwanted visitors.

A unique odor was emanating from the gutter where I stood, hesitating. Instead of squirrels, trash skittered across the asphalt that was caked with blackened gum and leaked oil. Endless intersections glared at me in a dizzying maze of uncertainty.

The North Faces and Rainbows that usually bounced by me were now trench coats and menacing heels that stalked my shadow, condemning me as an outsider, a product of alien suburbia.

This wasn't the home that I knew.

In Santa Clara, fallen leaves blanket the sidewalks where students roll by on their beach cruisers, stylish sunglasses strapped to their heads despite the cloudy forecast.

One is always expected to smile in this sort of amateur Pleasantville.

"You didn't say hello to me when I walked by you today," a friend will accuse, the worst insult to be uttered on a sunny day.

In this world of imported palm trees and librarian lawn furniture, Sector 9 skateboards transport mismatched plaid shorts and Ugg boots to art class.

At Santa Clara, briefcases are a rarity. Backpacks carelessly slung over shrugged shoulders carry the essentials: lip gloss, color-coded notebooks and highlighters.

Though day planners are common here, they speak nothing of the outside world in their petty scrawls of homework assignments and club meetings.

Stacks of The New York Times remain neatly folded in their dorm stands, disgruntled by their uselessness in a self-centered college world.

In this mock representation of society, it's easy to forget that the real world lies just down the street and around the corner.

It's true, I took Caltrain of my own accord. Nobody told me that I would have to leave sunny suburbia.

But that's what made it so exciting. This black hole we like to call the real world doesn't have to be such a fearsome thing.

Even if it means, as graduating students, that we're not coming back on the 10 p.m. train.

In fact, acculturating oneself to a world where national news matters and the scrawls written in your datebook are for important meetings and interviews can be thrilling, enlightening, even.

Upon realizing this, I forgot my desire to click my heels thrice and wish to be home.

Instead, I scanned the block with a watchful eye, finally found what I was looking for and whistled.

I had hailed my cab.