Things I learned about my cab driver on the ride from the airport to the hotel here in New Orleans:
1. He is 74.
2. He has fathered 12 children in his life.
3. He has been married some unspecified number of times, apparently in excess of 3. He blames his inability to stay married on having done time in the military which taught him to give orders, not take them.
4. His children range in age from 4 months to 53 years old.
5. His youngest child was the product of his and his most recent ex-wife's temporary reconciliation.
6. He does missionary work in Honduras 4 times a year, but not with his Baptist church, because, although he attends church he is not fond of all the Baptist restrictions on his life.
7. One of his sons fathered a child in Honduras 5 years ago and will not support that child. The child has also been abandoned by her mother, whose husband (not the cab driver's son) will not allow the child to live with them.
8. He supports his Honduran granddaughter, who lives with her aunt, and is going to marry the aunt so that she and the child can come to the US to live. The aunt is 35 and he worries that she is set in her ways. (see #1 above for faint irony)
9. He has a 27 year old daughter named Tiffany who is planning to get married.
10. He smoked for 40 years until Tiffany, at age 2, put one of his cigarettes in her mouth and that ended up in a photo, which he did not find amusing. (I don't think the math works out, but who am I to question that?)
11. He encouraged me to bring my family to New Orleans for the Jazz Festival.
12. He goes to Honduras every year at Mardi Gras, because he can't stand the traffic in New Orleans.
13. I am lucky my husband doesn't smoke because otherwise we would have trouble.
14. One of his friends, an African-American detective, was almost killed in an abandoned public housing project we passed.
15. He showed me a picture (while driving) of his granddaughter.
16. He feels he was put on this earth to work with the impoverished children in Honduras (no mention of working with their mothers).

I gave him an outrageously large tip for the sheer entertainment value of the ride. I'll bet he changes the story just a little for every gullible tourist who comes to town. By the end of the trip, I was ready to adopt the granddaughter and go to Honduras to do missionary work myself. Then I sobered up and remembered I have no Christian affiliation and don't do well in humid climates. So much for good works.