The Table
So there we are sitting in our little booth, finishing up a, tasty meal. It dawns on us, it’s time. Who will it be? Who will it be? Hmmm…. them! Who? Them, the couple behind me over my left shoulder. All right, lets do it! Our waiter comes over and asks:
Would you like to take the rest with you?
Yes, we would. Could we have our check? Ahhh, we’d also like to pay for that table.
Uhh…what table?
Any table really, but we were thinking of that table….
Fingers point discreetly, and the target is understood. We slip him a SMILE card and ask that it be given to them in lue of the bill. He walks over to the register and exchanges a few words with his manager. The Manager looks up, glances over, and smiles. The waiter returns and asks:
He wants to know if this table would be OK?
Again fingers point and the new target is understood. Sure! The new target is a family sitting at a large round table. There’s a young boy in a wheelchair smiling and talking. The waiter leaves us and returns with both checks. I place my credit card inside the dark brown vinyl check holder. He returns, I open the check holder and note that a large discount has been made to the bill. A crisp blue line has been drawn across the price for the entrées and a new one has been written in. 40% or so has been taken off. I smile and think: OK, Its tip time. I write in a tip, to thank them for the discount…..
We race off hearts pounding and faces smiling.
So tonight I’m paying my bills on-line and see the charge from the restaurant, somehow the tip is gone.
everyday…
this one will stay with me for a long time
mr x, you should post this on helpothers.org!
I have a good story like this one too. After the Walk for Hope, Luke and I went to Au Lac, a fine restuarant that serves humanese cuisine in Fountain Valley (home of the great goddess with 3 Ts).
There were 3 ladies sitting at a table across from us. And we were enjoying the fresh young cocnut juice they serve at Au Lac. Luckily the CF crew had recently sent me a pack of Smile Cards (which I ordered from HelpOthers.org). And I guess the rule is that after you go to WFH, you should tag someone with a smile card. It it was auspicious that the ladies across from us were also wearing WFH shirts. So, we call the waiter and give him 3 smile cards and tell him we want to buy the ladies 3 fresh young coconut juices and give them the smile cards and he has to do it secretly.
But the anonymous part of it backfired! At the time they were served with the gift we were the only other people in the restaurants. And one of their group had left. So the 2 ladies that remained guessed it was us. And they came over to talk to us. I was thinking, this is a great way to pick up chicks (just kidding). Both of the women that came over were very pretty. They gave us free passes to come check out their yoga studio.
Anything goes…re: random acts of kindness…sometimes it works out that the person guesses it’s you,etc. I gave my neighbor’s daughter a beautiful fairy godmother like gift…for a little princess. It was a beautiful hand made structure to hold earrings and necklaces with ceramic hearts,etc. I knew it would be perfect for her! So I put it near their door when they were gone…but I ran into the father..and I couldn’t keep it a secret. I told him I was the secret Mrs. Santa, and he said that he and his wife were wondering who gave the gift…and just that period of time where he and family were wondering is so precious to me. So many miracles can happen out of RAOKs: a smile, a hug, a date, a squinch of self love and kindness within and without, the works! I remember in So.Africa, we paid for peeps behind us…when going through a toll road area and we thought we would never see the people we paid for…but we had pulled to the side of the road to sight see…there was the beautiful sea on the way to where the Indian and Atlantic ocean meet…and the car we paid for pulled behind us and we took pics with them…I will never forget their smiles…so magical…these moments! :) Something about the very act of putting a smile card somewhere…seems to create so many gifts…I think I’ll give one to some random cute guy at a bookstore or something. Why not?… I have felt really happy when I’ve done something that pushes the envelope a bit for me. Whether it’s been leaving a bouquet of flowers in front of a Trader Joe’s store, putting gifts out on the curb for people that walk in front of my house, or giving something to a server at a restaurant without them knowing…I feel it creates such radiant waves of laughter and love in the universe. The eternal yes…dawns on me when I do this or my fellow human beings do….and in these moments, we are…in the words of fabulous Moby: “all made of stars.”