So this past Friday I took Sarah out for dinner to celebrate her birthday. We were both (and by both I mean me) craving Chinese food, and so we decided to go to this little quaint place about 2 miles from our house called Mee Maw Intimate Chinese Dining & Cuisine.
I'll be honest that "intimate dining" sort of had a weird ring to it that had always kept my wife and I at bay...as if we were going to walk into this place and find some kind of topless adult hangout for creepy middle-aged men.
Luckily the inside was a warm, welcoming, family friendly environment with dim lighting, romantic wall paper, and cute little booths.
After we finished celebrating that we had entered an actual restaurant establishment and not an Asian gentlemen's club, we settled into a both and got to ordering some food.
When our waitress arrived, we were introduced to this soft-spoken, petite, middle-aged Chinese woman, whose name we later learned was Rosina.
Rosina seemed timid, ready for any possible moment in which my wife and I would inevitably morph into blood-thirsty woozles that would pillage and devour her and everyone else in the room. It was obvious to me she was very accustomed to rude and demanding people, and it immediately broke my heart.
Both Sarah and I are very good at being attentive to these sorts of presuppositions, and so to make her night, we really spiced it up and went out of our way to smile and use a lot of polite words like "please" and "thank you".
Almost immediately she went from timid to grateful...and eventually to excited/ecstatic!
Upon the second or third visit to our table as she brought us our Crab Rangoon appetizers and refilled our waters, she looked at us and said- "You are a good match. Good match. You are also so very polite. So often people come in here and they are not polite. They are very (she went onto to impersonate what I can only imagine was an obese middle-aged man demanding more food)."
She would come back several times after this and repeat her compliment to us, praising us like we were celebrities simply because we used polite tone and smiled, treating Rosina like any human being wishes to be treated. We didn't give her a golden trinket or pay for her kid to go to college, but our basic kindness somehow rocked her world (I could only imagine how badly other patrons must have treated her in past encounters).
She would later show her appreciation by giving us extra food- boxes of rice, bags of almond cookies (I LOVE almond cookies), and continuing to tell us how nice and good we were. At that point I was going to ask her if she was in fact some kind of nun or some sort of saint brought there that evening to build up Sarah and my egos, like a high five to our self-confidence.
It was at the point of her bringing us our check that my wife and I asked her her name. She stepped back immediately and looked surprised. 'You want to know my name??', was all I could read on her face.
After she had told us her name and we have received the bill, we gave her our money and tip and offered a final "Thank you so much, Rosina!" as we exited the door.
Well this was apparently the ultimate gesture of our do-goodedness that we had always thought was just common courtesy. Rosina looked at us, with heart-felt warmth in her eyes, and said "You are both so nice, and such a good memory!"
I don't know why I share this story with you. I don't know if I have accurately relayed to you the incredible warmth and genuine beauty in Rosina's spirit. I'm not sure if there is a moral to this story.
What I can tell you is that genuine kindness and treating people with dignity and respect is always a good way to brighten someone's day.
But remember someone's name, and you'll have changed their lives forever!
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