Second thoughts...

We frequent a place in our neighborhood for breakfast on Saturday mornings. Most people in New York do brunch. We do breakfast. The place we go to does not do brunch, they do breakfast. And they do it so well and so old school that you can't help but go back again and again. Best pancakes in the world. The place is so good that as you wait in line (and you do wait in line) servers come out with trays of cookies and mugs of coffee and orange wedges. The guy who owns it (the son of the guy who started it in 1936) figures if you want to come to his place so bad that you'll wait in line he'll at least make the wait as pleasant as possible. Gus is his name. He's fantastic. He remembers you after the very first meeting. He jokes with MT that he's going to steal me away from him, so don't slip up. He once told MT, "She's real pretty. Like that Britney Spears." The thing is - he meant it as a compliment. This was before she was certifiably nuts.

There's a woman who works there who's the only one who never smiles. I usually make a snide comment about her to MT. Something like, "Would it kill her to smile once in awhile?" I always wonder what the hell is so bad that she's so sour all the time. The rest of the staff is so friendly and outgoing. She sticks to herself and scowls.

Yesterday I was walking home from the market. I stopped after work to get some things for dinner. The custom in my neighborhood is to leave cans out the night before recycling so that folks who need some extra cash can collect them and get the 5 cent deposits from the recycling machine near the market. Sometimes they're homeless, sometimes they're just trying to make ends meet.

I rounded the corner and saw the pushcart piled with big, black garbage bags of cans. I moved over to the edge of the sidewalk so the person behind it could push past with room. As we passed each other I saw that the person was the woman from our breakfast spot. The scowling woman. In an instant I realized that the scowl isn't a scowl, it's just the look of defeat. She's exhausted, she's not mean. I don't know that I have ever felt so sheepish in my life.

Life is full of lessons, friends. I'm learning new ones every day.