Random Acts of Kindness

There's one thing I've long been convinced of (and many different restaurant jobs didn't hurt) -- that the likelihood of someone complaining when something goes wrong is fucking exponentially greater than of anyone saying a simple thank-you. I try to remember that at all times. Kind human contact matters, whether it's between best friends or between a grocery store clerk and customer.

So tonight I enjoyed a nice evening out with our friend John and his younger daughter Sue. Sue and I were having a grand old time at the IHOP -- they didn't have place-mats to color, but the waitress kindly brought us some blank paper and a Sharpie. So after we finished our meals, Sue and I wrote some poems for fun, and one of them was a brief haiku to leave the waitress alongside her tip. It was silly and shallow, but well intentioned.


IHOP Haiku

Hash browns, pancakes, eggs --
lovely servers and good food --
dinner at IHOP.


We each signed our name (Sue added a flower, and I scrawled a peace sign). The waitress seemed really surprised when she came to pick up the empty dishes that I had carefully stacked into a tower. "This is for me?" she asked, and tucked the haiku into her pocket. When she returned, she was beaming. "Which of you is Kelly and which is Sue? Thank you so much. I feel like a person tonight."

Yeah, she really said that.

Yeah. Like all it took to give someone a nice moment was something as small as that. I don't know if most people would find a haiku so cool. But I know I'm going to try it again.