Free This I Believe: Life Lessons by Dan Gediman, Mary Jo Gediman, John Gregory Page B

week after week and always sat at one of my tables. Slowly, I began having short conversations with my new guest. His name was Mr. Rodgers, but he insisted that I call him Don. I learned that he and his wife had gone to dinner and a movie every Saturday. Since she had died, he carried on the tradition alone. I began looking forward to him coming in and telling me his movie reviews. I also knew his order by heart: a half of a chicken salad sandwich, a cup of potato soup, and a bottle of Coors Light (which he never finished).
    As the weeks went on I began to sit and really talk with Don. We talked about his wife, his days flying in the war, his son who had grown and moved away. Eventually, we began to talk about my ambitions—going to school, my new husband, and the anticipation of my future.
    About four months after meeting Mr. Rodgers, I received a call at home from a nurse telling me that Don was in intensive care at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital. He was experiencing complications from an emergency heart surgery and had begun to bleed internally. I immediately drove to the hospital to see him. The first thing he did was thank me for urging him to visit the doctor. At first I didn’t know what he was referring to. Then I remembered that about three weeks earlier, Don was complaining about chest pains and I gave him the number for a doctor I knew. At the hospital, the nurses asked, “Are you his daughter?” and I replied, “No, I’m his waitress.”
    Since meeting Don, I have learned that strangers can become acquaintances, and even friends. I recently found myself really talking to customers at the restaurant. I have had a lot more fun, the time has gone by faster, and I have gotten to know some of the people I see on a regular basis. Don taught me that life can be much more enjoyable if I engage in friendly conversations. After all, I became more than just his waitress. I became his friend.
    Since writing this essay when she was a student at Lewis University, Sabrina Dubik has graduated and left behind her waitressing job to begin her career as an English teacher at Minooka High School. While teaching, she strives to inspire enthusiasm for literature, writing, and the art of living life.

Finding Our Common Ground

    Robin Mize
    There was a big peace march in Washington a few years back. I watched as my husband made a sign to carry and my son painted slogans on a T-shirt. “Sure you don’t want to come?” my husband asked me.
    He knew that I was sympathetic to the cause. I felt just as strongly as he and all our friends, who were going, did. But I just couldn’t go. I begged off, saying I wasn’t comfortable with the crowds.
    But the thing that made me uneasy wasn’t just the number of people gathered there. It was the mob mentality of a large group of people who feel they are right, even if I agree with them. It was the absolutism lurking in the liberal ideals. To me it felt just as scary as any other kind of intolerance.
    On the other hand, I know it takes a kind of fervor and belief to change things. But there is a fine line there, and somehow group protests, while I respect them, walk too close to that line for me. What scares me is the self-congratulatory, undiscriminating nature of the mob. I think of the French Revolution, I picture those Nazi rallies, and I fear the self-complacency of knowing that you are right.
    I wonder if it has to do also with the fact that I come from a family in which the liberal is a rare bird. Four of my siblings are staunch conservative Republicans. I love them dearly, and the fact that these people whom I love are the evil enemy of the peace march gives me pause.
    It forces me to accept a contradiction, knowing both things to be true. They are the enemy, but they are also my family. We do not agree, but I have to accept that they are thoughtful and compassionate people who have come to the opposite conclusion about how things should be. I