Plaid Taco Stand

A lesson I learn again and again is: It's really the little things that make the biggest difference. Everybody knows it-India Arie even wrote a song about it! I think we just forget sometimes.

Last weekend a little blond man with a scratch on his nose and a big black woman wearing plaid did a little thing for a group of us that has stayed with me all week.

It's early evening and we've just finished rehearsal. We throw on boots, sandals, scarves, hats, sweatshirts-random remnants from our daytime outfits- over our slightly sweaty dance clothes. We talk our way to our cars and head to a nearby taco place for happy hour (tacos, burritos and margaritas $1.50 a piece!!)

The place is PACKED and we are forced to park in Northeastern Timbuktu. It's Southern California so who cares about walking a couple blocks in the just barely cooled evening air. The inside of the restaurant is even more packed. Some people are sitting at tables or perched on stools; but just as many are standing, eying the sitters and willing them to eat faster. There are some high tables that customers linger around while waiting for a proper dinner table (not sure what the difference is...maybe it's not dinner if it's eaten on a high top table? maybe some customers are afraid of heights?).

We decide to order our food in shifts so the waiting girls can search for the stationary goldmine that is an open and clean table. As a part of Waiting Girls Shift 1, we spot a small empty couple-size table next to a big 5girls-sized table that is inhabited by a singular man. Operating on Rule #42 -"You have not because you ask not," we approach the man.

"Are you sitting alone?, because..."

"No I'm waiting for someone," he replies in the most quick and politest of fashions.

"Oh, then nevermind." I am also very good at quick and polite. I begin to walk away.

"Why do you ask?" His nose has a pretty nasty scratch on it and I find myself wondering if he has a cat that is as violent as ours.

"Oh, because there are five of us and if you weren't waiting for somebody I was gonna ask if..."

"Here! Take it! I can totally move." Picks up his things and bounces to the couple-sized table before I can even by properly surprised by his niceness.

"Wow. Thanks! We really appreciate it!" Waiting Girls Shift 1, Girl #2 and I move quickly to stake our claim on the table. It'll definitely fit 5 girls!

"Awwww! That was real sweet of you," says a strangely gruff female voice behind us. We turn around and see two women smiling at Scratched Nose.

"That was nice of him," one of the women informs us. They are heavyset Black women, both dressed in blue. I (with my propensity to assume) guess they are lesbians. They sit very close throughout the meal and bicker like a couple. And one of them is wearing plaid...and not the fashionable kind of trucker-chic plaid; the kind of plaid only worn by Crips in the 1980s, farmers and (of course) lesbians.

Plaid lady, when she's not swearing at her girlfriend or at the unlucky listener on her cell phone, has a very warm aura about her and I kind of want to hug her.

Ordering Girls Shift 1 return and celebrate our success at securing a table. We switch titles and shifts and leave the current Waiting Girls Shift 2 (previously Ordering Girls Shift 1...are you following?) to conjure up 2 extra seats since our perfect table only came with 3. We return with our orders (and some tasty chips) to find the ladies standing around 4 empty chairs now, no one wanting to be the girl that sits down at the expense of one person having to stand.

"No, you sit down. I've been sitting all day."

"No, you go ahead! I'm totally fine."

"Oh no no...I have wide calloused feet. Perfect for standing!" (this one is an embellishment for my own personal amusement)

And so on and so forth until Plaid lady presumably gets tired of our well-meaning bickering. She wades through the sea of customers to the other side of the room. She picks up a bar stool, raises it above her head like some sort of strange orange trophy and plops it down at our perfect table.

"There you go! Now everyone can sit." She's not irritated or being sarcastic. She's just...nice.

And I want to hug her again.

She walks back to her table, a plaid ship amongst a sea of tacos, and resumes her conversation.

A word problem: If each person took time to satisfy one need (no matter how trivial) of another person, how many needs would there be left?

Answer: 74.

Just kidding...NONE, of course!

Sometimes love looks like one extra chair, courtesy of a woman in plaid.