Before I was a Yoga Teacher I was a waitress

Have you ever seen the movie "Across the Universe"? There's a part in the beginning were Max and Lucy invite Jude to their family home for Thanksgiving dinner. Jude's from Liverpool and doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, obviously. With the holiday, he had no where to be. The scene shows them sitting around a large table with Max & Lucy's parent's and uncle. Max and his father begin to argue.

The debate kicks off when Max's father pressures him about his future, leading to Max's famous "do, do, do" Max's Father: "Goddammit, Max! Get serious, for once! What are you going to DO with your life?" Max: "Why is it always what will I do? 'What will he do', 'What will he do', 'Oh, my god what will he do', Do, do, do, do, do. Why isn't the issue here who I am?" Uncle Teddy: "Because, Maxwell, what you do defines who you are." Max: "No, Uncle Teddy. Who you are defines what you do. Right Jude?" Jude: [awkwardly] "Well, surely it's not what you do, but the... the way that you do it."

Such a great movie! I’ve always found my identity through my work. If someone asks who I am, my mind immediately goes to what I do. I rarely introduce myself as a wife, a mom, or even simply Jaime. Fair or unfair, I’ve always measured my value by the contribution I make.

I waited tables for so much longer than the typical person. Typically it's a stepping stone position into your next career. Waiting tables gives you a lot of great tools from time management, customer service, multi-tasking, marketing and so on. I was really good at it and honestly I enjoyed it.

I met so many lovely people and learned so much about human behavior. I had a game I would play in my head about guessing what people would order. I don't know if I could really read people's minds our if it was being aware of patterns. I also had an excellent memory. Most of the time I didn't have to write things down. That allowed me to maintain eye contact while taking orders which made people feel seen. I could easily handle seven tables at once if I had the right grill cook. There was this grill cook Alan that I was so in sync with. When it was just the two of us I would appear at the window to pick up the order approximately thirty seconds before it was ready. I had this uncanny sense. It's like seeing with more than just my eyes.

I also had so many regular customers. There would be times that my station would be full and I would have customers waiting for a table to open up while other servers didn't have anything to do. It would cause some friction. I didn't know what to say. People just liked me.

This morning I was cleaning my room and I came across a brown envelope with my name misspelled. That's nothing out of the ordinary. I pulled out a shirt. Ah.. I remember this.

One of my regulars was Dave Byrd. He's probably six feet with silver hair and always wore his sunglasses when he arrived. Dave always had to have a booth. His breakfast consisted of black coffee, wheat toast with real butter and sausage patties, burnt. Like hockey pucks. He read the Washington Post and would leave a $5 tip. Customers like Dave were always easy. Dave also had a great voice. I loved making small talk. I can't remember how I engaged him. I usually would pick up on something they were reading or wearing. Dave had an iPhone 3 and at the time meant he was ahead. His sister would join him from time to time. I didn't know she was his sister and made the mistake of asking "how long have you been married?" Whoops! I believe his sister has MS and he took care of her.

I received and iPod touch from my brother which was the greatest gift anyone could ever give me. It held so much music. The crazy thing was it was shuffling The Dark Side of the Moon. You don't shuffle Pink Floyd. Dave helped me fix this and perhaps this is where we connected about music.

In October of 2012 Dave showed up with a microphone. Turns out he's a reporter for WTOP. He interviewed us about how we felt about the impending snow storm we were getting on Halloween. I talked about how it was going to impact business. Even as a waitress I always thought about business.

I thought very highly of Dave. He's a good guy. We talked a lot about music. At the time I was really into the Beatles. One day he showed up with a brown envelope. I open it and pulled out a t-shirt. He says it's from the original Wings tour. Wow! That's pretty cool!

I haven't seen Dave since Bob Evan's in 2014. When I pull the shirt out today and looked at it, I decided to research it a little. It's an authentic Wings Over America tour shirt from 1976 from a man that knew Paul McCartney. He thought of me enough to share it with me. https://wtop.com/news/2013/01/blog-sammy-hagar-thanks-david-burd-for-career-launch-video/

Now should I hang on to the shirt or sell it?