I remember back when I was about eight years old or
so, after my parents had divorced. My father would
take my older brother and I out every other weekend.
One Saturday morning, my father, his then girlfriend
my brother and I had gone to a diner for late breakfast.
It turned out that the food was not good that day, and
the orders were all wrong. Mickie, my father’s girlfriend
had said to my father that he would be better off not
leaving the waitress any gratuity at all.
When we all got up to go, he said that he had a better
idea than stiffing the waitress. He took some change
out of his back pocket and left a nickel and three
pennies next to his coffee cup.
When Mickie questioned my father on why he even
leaves her anything all, my father answered, “It’s very
simple. This meal was worse than bad. If I leave the
waitress nothing, she can always nurse her
disappointment with consolation in the form of
oversight possibility. If I leave her this small change,
she’ll get the message.”
This, like many lessons I have learned along the way,
were good enough to make me a good judge of the
messages people send me, good or bad. My father and
I were not close at all, and he was a despicable man in
most capacities, but he was one of the most brilliant
men I have ever known to this day. The things I had
learned from him were through observation, and well
worth observing, much like other observations and
experiences in my life that nobody can take away from
me. This is how I found that learning from observation
and experience triumphs over hearsay, guesswork and
preconceived notions.
My father had me fooled in many ways. He had
everyone in his family fooled in many ways. When he
walked into a room that I was in, I would get the same
feeling I would get when I stand on a train platform
waiting for a train and that big powerful diesel engine
powered train comes in.
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