The first time I realized that my childhood was truly different from those of my friends was during an interaction with a customer in my mother’s restaurant during the summer of fourth grade. It was the usual summer routine. I was helping out my mom at the restaurant where my only job was to fill the ice tank on the main floor with buckets of ice from the freezer in the basement, but otherwise I would be sitting at my usual booth with my summer reading book sipping a colada from the Dunkin Donuts around the corner. A whoosh of air came in as each customer opened and closed the doors during the lunch rush. The sound in the restaurant was exhilarating, like a well-oiled engine, as my mom shouting orders while cooking and everyone doing their job to serve customers efficiently and me running up and down the stairs with buckets rattling with ice. This happened for about two hours until there was just one woman left in the restaurant. She sat in a booth by herself with a fancy purple blouse, her hands clasped tightly around Hillary Clinton’s memoir as she read. She ate her food like a bird, picking with her fork at pieces of food. When she was done she took a sip of water and quickly turned towards me and motioned me to come over. In a raspy voice, she murmured, “come here, boy. I’m finished.” In utter confusion, I approached her slowly and just stood in front of her, waiting. I wondered what she wanted me to do.
After the longest twenty seconds ever, she coughed and said, “well, are you going to take my plates boy?”. I quickly began to clear her plates and at the same time my mom came out of the kitchen to check in on me and I glance over and gave her a look of confusion. With a smile, my mom quickly walked over and began to ask the lady how her meal was while helping me clear her table. The lady snipped one-word responses at her and then she turned and asked me what country I was from. I happily replied, “here!”. But the lady’s face started to wrinkle and her eyes started to roll and then she asked my mom, “where is he really from?”. With a bit of a stutter and her best attempt at English, she said “he born in America,” proudly resting her hands on my shoulders.
The old lady was clearly confused and looked a bit disgusted about my mom’s response. At that point, I couldn’t hold the heavy plates any longer. My mom could see clearly that I was struggling to hold them so she gave me two taps on the shoulder to tell me to take the plates away. By the time I got back, the lady was gone and my mom was standing at the table alone, tears welling up in her eyes. I asked her what was wrong and why that old lady was so mean. All she could do was hug me and say, “you have to remember, Pat, that no matter what people say to you, never show them that they hurt you.” I have never forgotten my mom’s words, for better and for worse.
There’s something about working in food service that makes some customers think that they’re entitled to walk all over you, and it’s disgusting to hear about it, much less to experience it firsthand. Knowing that people still believe that it’s acceptable to act that way make me wonder if humanity could ever make successful relations with other planets; given the amount of people willing to discriminate on our own planet, I doubt it.
Your experience with that customer sounds awful. Sometimes people say really shocking things to others just because they appear to come from a different country. Just when you think you’ve heard it all, something new will pop up.