Heartwarming celebrity encounters: why can’t they happen to me? The closest I’ve ever gotten was when David Koechner pinned me to a bar with his belly (which admittedly was pretty cool). Anyway, today’s story, if it’s to be believed, is about a simple cab driver and his encounter with infamous nice guy Tom Hanks. It comes from the Humans of New York blog, dedicated to sharing heartwarming stories of everyday New Yorkiness, who posted the cab driver’s story on their Facebook page:
“So get this. I’m driving down Park Avenue one day and this guy waves for me, so I pull over and I ask him where he’s going. He tells me 74th street, and I tell him that’s too far for me, because my shift just ended, so he says ‘thanks anyway’ and walks away. But then I think about it, and I start feeling bad for the guy, cause hey– I got a conscience. So I call him back to the cab and tell him to hop in. And he gets in the car all excited, all animated, and he’s talking about all these things. But he’s got his cap pulled down way over his eyes, so I can’t see who it is. But pretty soon I start to recognize his voice. And when we get to a light, I turn to him, and I look him in the eye, and I scream: ‘WIIIIIIILLLSSSSSOOOOOOON!!!’
Good thing he was a cab driver and not, like, a proctologist, or a priest at a funeral or something.
“And that really got him. He started laughing hard. He sees that I’ve got this Ferrari hat on, and a Ferrari shirt too, so he starts calling me ‘Mr. Ferrari.’ The whole ride, he keeps calling me ‘Mr. Ferrari.’ So after we get to his destination, we snap a quick photo, and he goes on his way. And I think that’s it. But that’s not it, cause get this. Over the next few weeks, I just happen to randomly pick up people that know him. People who have acted with him before, people who work with him. And every time, I tell them: ‘Tell Mr. Hanks that Mr. Ferrari says ‘hello.'” Every time I say that. Then one day I’m driving, and I get a text from one of the people that I’d driven, and it says: ‘Mr. Hanks wants to invite you to see his Broadway show.’ So I bring my lady to the show, and we get to go backstage and everything, and after the show, we’re waiting for him in his dressing room, and he walks in and screams: ‘Mr. Ferrari!’ Can you believe that story? And you wanna know the craziest thing? The name of his show was ‘Lucky Guy.’ How crazy is that? Cause that was me. A lucky guy!”
Dang, I was thinking Tom Hanks was going to make the cab driver’s dream and buy him a Ferrari, and the guy would be so grateful that he’d pay it forward by driving sick kids around in his supercar for free. And soon, everyone in New York would have heard the tale of Mr. Ferrari, and traffic would part for his gleaming, make-a-wish dream car. But hey, tickets to a Broadway show are pretty cool too. I think the take away here is that if you see Tom Hanks on the street, shout lines from his movies at him. He loves it!
In related news, Chet Haze recently tried to pay for an Uber ride with a rap.
[hat tip: HuffingtonPost]