Rubys serve up love and kindness on Valentine's Day

From Emily Ruby

Like most things, ideas overwhelmed the intent. I started running scenarios about how to do the most good with that 250 dollars. How many people could we do something nice for? What is the threshold for it being meaningful? How much per person? Quality vs. Quantity?

It was valentine's day and the kids had a half day. We were crowded into a booth at Louie's grill. I had big plans buckets of flowers handed out to strangers, or maybe a shelter, or maybe the retirement home? I was totally distracted.  Everything was taking  longer than normal. The kids were getting restless. You could hear the waitress talking patiently with the table of two older ladies behind us.

"Now you know I don't like cheese on my omelet"

"I know Mary, I have you covered. I know what you like."

"No onions either, sometimes they try to slip them in"

"I"ll watch them, like a hawk I promise"

Our waitress came to our table with a big smile.  The kids were cranky, she slipped them special valentines fruit loops, charmed them and joked with them. Took our order and had it back to us before the kids could get any more desperate.  We tore through the special heart shaped pancakes, and watched her check in with seemingly every table in the place.  Mary from the booth next to us came over to chat. She was hilarious telling the kids about her grandson who was their age. Owen asked her to be his valentine. She blushed saying no one had asked her to be their valentine since her husband died 10 years ago.  He pulled out a valentine he made at school from his backpack and gave it to her. She hugged him and headed back to her table. Mary got the check and I heard her counting out change on the table with her friend. They slid change across the table splitting it exactly down the middle.

All that fretting, worrying about the best use for the kindness money. I missed the point, there is always need around everywhere. To spend too much time choosing between them, defeats the purpose. It's like hoarding joy to get the biggest rush.  I walked up to the cashier, paid for our meal and Mary and her friends and gave our waitress a $200 tip. Left before they knew about it.  It was fun to put a little random back into the random act of kindness.