I would like to comment on the story "The Taximan's Story" from the book "Little Ironies".

The main character of the story,the taximan picks up a teacher and talks to her about rebellious teenagers of today.He first cheerfully talks about how long he has been a taxi driver and the number of people in his family. He evcn boasts about his daughter who although is sickly, is a very obedient child.He than goes from praising his oldest daughter to complaining about his other daughter to the teacher.The taximan than laments about how teens have changed negatively compared to teens in the past and said that he would be cane when he was young whenever he did something wrong. He said solemnly that if parents are not strict, children would go astray and indulge in detrimental habits like refusing to study and instead going to nightclubs, take drugs and make love.

However, in spite of the praise he showers on his oldest daughter, he goes on to reprimand her and even and even goes to the extent of thrashing her, slapping her and beating her for behaving boldly and skipping school this is puzzling as when we read the earlier part of his story I thought that his daughter was the apple of his eye and that he would never criticise her openly. The irony is that although we expect that the taximan would not comment on the bad things that his daughter had done , and only comment on the good things she had done, however, unexpectedly, he talked about the shameful thing which his daughter did,which is shocking.Another thing is that the the taximan never expected his daughter to behave so boldly and lie to him that she was going back to school.He says he dislikes teens gone astray but little did we expect that he actually loves them for their generous tips and habit not to request for change, this is weird as he claimed he did not like them and he beat his daughter up because she behaved like them.

" None of my children could go to university but this one , she is very smart and

intelligent....her teachers write good and excellent ......." is very significant as it emphasises why he is unable to accept why his daughter is behaving this way.

I agree with the taximan as to why he is so infuriated because he has been working tirelessly this 20 years just for his child to go to University, but now his daughter has let him down totally by cheapening herself, she is also his only child that can make it to University.

However, my stand is that both parties are in the wrong the taximan should not apply so much pressure on her, causing her to behave in an undesirable behaviour while the daughter should not cheapen herself this way as it could derail her future and disappoint her parents.

the author uses broken english to show that that the taximan is poorly educated so he is pinning all his hopes on his daughter.He also keeps repeating the word madam as a form of respect for the teacher and his lack of vocabulary.The theme of the story is that to stand by your morals and reject bad influences.

Finally ,I would like to ask a question:Why is it that the taximan still wants to pick up such teens who play around with themselves just because of the lure of money? Shoudn't he go according to his own moral values?