During Passover this year at my friend Caryn’s, Daughter asked the young guests at her end of the table if they’d ever tasted the above-mentioned treat. She apologized first for bringing up bacon on Passover, but in light of past, present and future holiday conversations at Caryn’s, it was a relatively tame subject. And apparently, those two foods together are just a delicious flavor combination, which I would have guessed on my own since everything tastes better with bacon. Especially when someone else makes it.
Turns out bacon would reappear for me before the week was over. A few days later, I read a humorous story sent by the instructor who runs the online program I’m enrolled in while on a leave of absence from my regular school. He was relating the importance of completing the job at hand in a professional manner, regardless of outside factors. Seems when he first began teaching, he was reading an exercise to his mostly women students, and in his nervousness at being new in front of a class, misspoke one of the words and wound up clearly enunciating a female body part.
He looked up past his red face to see the class gawking at him in silence. He excused himself briefly and went down the hall to the bathroom to decide exactly where he would slash his wrists. But after a moment, he came to his senses and marched back into the room, finished reading the exercise, and regained control of the situation. I laughed when I read his story, both because he told it well and because it called to mind one of my own.
While on a summer break from college back in the seventies, I worked as a waitress in a busy Manhattan coffee shop. It was located on the ground floor of a large, midtown office building, and served the local business crowd for breakfast and lunch. As lowest on the seniority ladder, I was assigned the counter where the tips were smaller since most diners were eating alone.
One of my regulars was an impossibly attractive young businessman around thirty. He always had a polite, easy way about him, in his nice suit, tie, and handsome smile. He worked in one of the offices upstairs, and coffee shop rumor had it that his family owned the building. Which made his sitting at my station even more devastating for a 20-year-old at a gritty job in an ugly uniform.
He always ordered a grilled cheese and bacon with chocolate milk, and left at least a dollar tip. Very nice. Then one day I arrived to take his order and to my surprise he said, “I’ll have a scoop of tuna on a bed of lettuce and a Coke, please.” I was walking away when I noticed he hadn’t given a beverage size. I spun around quickly to ask what size Coke he wanted, but instead fell into his ocean blue eyes and blurted out, “Large or small bed?”
His eyebrows went up, but I didn’t stick around to exchange words. With my whole head on fire, I strode into the kitchen and pressed my face against the door of the walk-in freezer. I might still be standing there if the cook hadn’t yelled to me, “Hey, princess! You got orders sittin’ up here. Let’s go!” With plates stacked all the way up my arm, I cruised past the Dreamweaver and said in my most professional voice, “Your order will be up in a moment, sir.” Unbeknown to me, I had instantly learned my instructor’s lesson. No matter how big that bed of lettuce might be, I wasn’t going anywhere near it.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos show us a Touch of Philly
philadelphia murals
snyderman art gallery
prophetic motto
feed me!