Sharing kind words written on a napkin
Published 3:18 pm Monday, January 31, 2005
As my fellow bon vivants, habitues, and scapegraces appreciate, I have my own table at Pendleton’s Big John’s Hometown Pizza where I am often found in the evening, drinking a glass of tank burgundy and knocking back a small Portuguese linguiza pizza cut into eighths. Thus it has been for years, to the point that the staff can order it all up as I walk in. I might have a pad with me, but my best work is done on Big John’s napkins.
I am a committed, chronic napkin writer. Likewise a lifelong bachelor, I like Big John’s family atmosphere where I can study and enjoy what I haven’t much had since I was a kid. I feast on others’ families. Just that kind of guy. So, I will alternate between reading and writing, list making, and observing. I will also strike up conversations with neighboring tables or just say wise things to little kids as they toddle by. “Hey there, cowgirl, I sure do like that pretty hat!” Until I get a life, it’s my street theater.
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Anyway, I was sitting there the other night when a young family came in and ordered up their fave pizza and then took seats at two tables just down from mine. There were two young sons and a pretty girl with different color hair, who may have been a friend or maybe their daughter. They were 5-7 years old and having a very good time with their pizza and then off visiting all the kid attractions of this recycled Shakey’s Pizza Parlor. The beefy husband looked military, maybe local Army Reserve/National Guard staff, what with his bearing and white-wall haircut.
When I first took real notice of them, the man and wife weren’t looking at one another, determinedly, I thought. I looked at her. She was splendid.
A taller young mom, all carefully sports casual and plainly understated, an efficient but stylish yacht-tail haircut, exquisite aquiline features, with large, absolutely killer eyes. She herself had had some fine parenting, clearly with the goal that she would wear well, handle her innate glamour. Something was in the air, so as I wrote and drank, I watched. She wanted to deal with him and he wasn’t much in the mood. Unclear at first, then I saw why she had married him: He had a killer smile to go against her killer eyes. Ah! This would bear watching.
Soon she went out into the entryway to pick up a real estate shopper from its rack and proceeded to scan their future. She would glance, catch him with her eyes, and then show him a three-bedroom while he clearly wanted a smaller starter. But she couldn’t get much rise out of him. The kids came back and hit him up for quarters, which he had planned, and they took off to kids parts unknown. They were both good parents. I was enthralled.
Anyway, I returned to my work. But I thought, no, you have something to say to him. So as they boxed-up leftover pizza, I reached for a Big John’s napkin and wrote him a note. Thirty-eight words, two questions.
At about the time I finished writing, they stood up to leave. So I stood up and stepped to the husband’s back and tapped him on the shoulder. Surprised, he almost jumped. I pressed the napkin into his hand and returned to my seat as they made their way to the door. Through the door’s window I saw them look briefly at the note and then exit the entryway.
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Hoping I had done good, I returned to my list-making. But, a couple minutes later he came back in and walked directly to my table and looked me in the eye. Goodness! What if …
Then with that killer smile, “That was the nicest thing ever said to us. My wife is outside in the car, crying.” He turned and left. That was it.
When you get to be my bachelor age, you get to be sage. And do such stuff. I hope I added something to a marriage. I tried.
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Tom Hebert, who admits he’s a gadfly, is a writer and public policy consultant living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation outside Pendleton. His e-mail is tlhmavrick@uci.net