Red Sharpie Blues

Incompetent. Multiplied by 32.

That's how many times I scribbled that nasty, hurtful word on my waitressing pad during my dinner break at the local pizza place. The red sharpie penmanship still stings to look at. I listlessly sipped my water and tried to de-stress, but I still couldn't help but feel like I was a little Matilda being trapped in the Chokey by a big, mean Miss Trunchbull.

Only I was both Matilda and Miss Trunchbull, and with or without Miss Honey, it was a sticky situation.

See, I am one of those crazy overachievers who strongly feels the need to be good at everything. Underwater basket weaving? No sweat. (Do people sweat underwater anyway though?) Honors classes out the wazoo? Got it in the bag. But waitressing...

I can't learn it from a textbook. It's not a concept that I can contemplate about late at night when I can't sleep. It's practical know-how, an insane ability to focus, and a channeled skill for multi-tasking. It's the real world.

Yeah... could I have a one-way ticket to Mars, please? I'm not ready for the real world...

I spilled someone's drink all over their table, I made some customers 20 minutes late to their meeting because I couldn't figure out how to split their ticket, and I stained all of the artifacts of my apron with blood-red sharpie because I lost the lid. With every pity tip I collected, I felt like they should have given me a tip more like this: Become unemployed.

Thank goodness they had the kindness not to leave such a tip, though, because 1) I might have actually, in exasperation, taken their advice, and 2) I feel like I have finally figured out what it means to persevere. To keep going when I want to quit. To tell myself I can when my broken ego screams that I can't.

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that I lost that sharpie lid because now I will never have the ability to sting myself with "incompetent" again. That word dried up long ago. Now all I have is an empty waitressing pad and one simple question:

"What delicious pizza can we make for you today?"