Taxista

Dear Silence,

This hasn't been a very strange week.  There have been developments, but none that I can comment on here.  I can tell you that the vast majority of my work week was spent riding in a car to and from meetings (3 hours each way).  After living here for eight months (happy anniversary to me), riding in a car has become something of a novelty.  I'm not counting taxis, because taxis are weird, covered in plastic like a 50s couch and smell like popcorn.

This popcorn smell is one of two things I can't explain about taxis.  It's not a good smell either, although I'm not really a fan of the smell of popcorn anyway.  I'm fine with eating it, but something about the smell of your kitchen after popping a fresh bag in the microwave is nauseating to me.  Only the microwave kind, not the stove kind.  My guess is this stomach turning feeling stems from a day in middle school when I scrapped all the plastic butter left in the empty bag out and ate it while watching MTV.  I then spent the next 12 hours vomiting and losing the will to live.  The fact that my mom had the same virus before me had no bearing on my connection between plastic microwave popcorn butter and gut-tearing heaves and uncontrollable tears. 

The inside of a taxi smells like if you took that barrel of popcorn you received as a Christmas present from some company representative with whom you have occasional dealings*, ate half of it, put the lid on and let it sit in a humid garage for a few months. It's a smell you can feel in the back of your throat.  When we first moved, I actually felt under the seat for an opened bag of kettle corn trying to figure out what it was**.  There was nothing there.

*These are the only people that give flavored popcorn as gifts, right?  Nothing says "I have no idea who you are or what you actually enjoy" quite like a greasy, keg divided into a pie of butter, cheese and caramel popcorn.  It's not a complaint, just an observation.  I can throw down on some cheddar cheese popcorn.

**Which totally brings me to my favorite Vietnamese taxi freshener: the pineapple.  This is not a little cardboard cut-out that dangles from your rearview mirror, but a very real and very sad looking pineapple rolling around the floorboards of your vehicle.  So if you're looking for an environmentally friendly car-freshener, I highly recommend chucking a pineapple in the back seat and letting it age.  You'll be shocked how good it smells, until it doesn't.

The other thing I can't explain is the Hennessy Cannon.  Protective dashboard ornaments are something of a requirement for cars here.  I understand the idea behind Buddha on your dash, but have no idea what the significance of a mini-bottle of cognac in a rolling holder made to look like a cannon and stuck to the dashboard of a moving vehicle holds.   I've sat in the front seats of a number of taxis with this particular ornament and studied it, but still cannot discern what it does.  Perhaps it's there in case you're in a jam at happy hour, or if you have a close encounter with a bus.  I suppose you never know when you might need a soul fortifying shot that can only satisfy the needs of iced out hip-hop artists and Vietnamese taxi drivers.  I have never ever thought to myself, "I could really go for some warm cognac that's been sitting on a sunny dashboard for six months right now*." 

*In fact, I've only had Hennessey one time.  It is my personal philosophy that liquor should be enjoyed with only one mixer: ice.  After one sip of a glass "Henny" as the rappers call it, I poured 3/4 of a can of Sprite into my glass.  I don't even like Sprite, but it helped that foul devil-spawned beverage. 

And here's the strange thing:  I seem to be the only person who finds the Hennessy Cannon strange.  Everyone I've mentioned it to has either never noticed it, or doesn't care enough to ask why it's there or what purpose it serves.  Being an industrious fellow who spends 8-10 hours a day sitting in front of a computer, I Googled that shit.  NOTHING.  I couldn't get an image searching for "hennessey cannon" or "hennessey dash ornament" or "hennessey car ornament" or "hennessey air freshener."  Although I was treated to a healthy dose of candy cars, random freaky porn and strange looking people (how do you do it internet?).  Even the world wide web, where useless information goes to mold, doesn't care enough about the Hennessy Cannon to bother explaining it.  I couldn't find one reference to a Hennessy Cannon in or outside a Vietnamese taxi.  I suppose that it's not all that important if I didn't immediately feel compelled to take a photo of it either.  In fact, once I stopped to think how weird it was, I stopped seeing them.  The Hennessey Cannon has become something of a Vietnamese unicorn for me because so many people give me a crazy look when I mention it.  At least now it's on the internet, so the next person won't feel weird, alone and isolated like I do.  I'm doing my part.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say it is an air freshener.  It probably is.  It answers the function question, but creates many more questions.  Why is it a Hennessey bottle and not some other adult beverage (Smirnoff Ice Car Freshener anyone)?  Why is it set up to look like a cannon, when it could just sit on the dash like a normal bottle?  If you buy it to make your taxi smell fresh, why do all taxis smell like nasty old microwaved popcorn?

Am I missing something here?  I think getting to the bottom of this mystery is as good a reason as any to learn Vietnamese.  If you know anything about the origins of the Hennessey Cannon dash ornament please share it with me. 

When I started writing this I was writing an introduction to post a story I wrote in August.  I guess that will have to wait for another day.