Drat That Tomato.

Drat that tomato. You know, the one I joked about in the beginning…only it was supposed to happen to you, not me. Remember earlier when the wedding party was just arriving and we were traying up the salads with those adorable cherry tomatoes that like to roll their chubby selves all around? Yes, I was being my typical contained self and warning you that if one went rolling you were not to dash after the tomato but keep at the real job of passing out salads. You snapped back that you were well aware on the how to’s of waitressing…I laughed. You laughed.

The head table went great…everything to the right person, no spilling someone’s glass like at the last one. Whew. Being a natural klutz and loving waitressing do not always blend well, especially when it is necessary. Serving 250 people demands a lot…most especially making sure you don’t fall into robot mode but keep a person air of interacting and smiling at all those happy people as you remember a zillion requests and comments.

So there was Lydia, trying her darnedest to do just that. She was stacking salad plates together and having them handed to her from all directions and half of them had those chubby red tomatoes still on them because certain people prefer to watch them roll around their plate, I guess. Why else would you not eat your tomato? For your information, plates don’t happen to stack very neatly when chubby red tomatoes are rolling around on them…so I shifted and squeezed them a bit to ease the perilous situation…squeezed them a little too hard considering they had leftover dressing on them (I love leftovers, especially leftover tomatoes) and fifteen slippery plates shot into the air showering me with Ranch, French and Thousand Island, paralyzing two lovely young girls in white background dresses, and sending me to my knees with a red face…very much like those chubby red tomatoes…wishing I could roll right out of there.

Shaken by this traumatic turn of events I made it disappear as fast as possible receiving several worried cold glasses from the wearers of the lovely white background dresses. Life went on. Carefully I came back to the traumatized table and began clearing their plates, they gave more uneasy glances. I had another stack by the time I was finished and was so uptight the entire stack dared to slip away…the mother of the wearers of those white background dresses, shielded her face and as I hurried away she gasped, “Oh that girl nearly did it again!”. That girl…shot into the back room with water pitchers and in her nervous state of trying to make the world all right drenched her shoes and pant legs while dropping a pitcher. She scowled…cringed…and carried on. Carried on with excellent service, snappy retorts, and a smile of service which forgot all errors.