NEEDHAM, Mass. On Sunday night the air was clear and cool here, but storm clouds were on the horizon–literally and figuratively–as rain was predicted for the days ahead. “We wanted to get out of the house for dinner,” says Ethel Leighton, “since we might be stuck staring at each other for the rest of the week.”
“Arithmetic is easy–I was doing it in the first grade!”
And so the former secretary and her husband Al, a recently retired customs broker, drove to Walter’s Family Restaurant just off Route 128, “America’s Technology Highway,” for their favorite dinner entrees: baked fish for him–“It’s the only time I get scrod anymore,” he says with a laugh–and stuffed pork chops for her.
Ethel enjoyed her night out so much that she encouraged Al to go “above and beyond” in his treatment of Suzie Frechette, who has waited on the Leightons for years.
“Aren’t you supposed to carry a one or something?”
“You should do something nice for her for a change,” Ethel said when the check appeared at their table. “Like maybe–I don’t know–tip more than 15% for once?”
“Fine, but we’re living on a fixed income now,” Al grumbled as he took pen in hand and started calculations in his head, while his wife went off on a tangent about their eldest son, who had recently moved to Kankakee, Illinois, and an all-weather carpet she was thinking of buying for their screened-in porch, and the troubles of a neighbor who had twisted her ankle and was unable to walk her pet Jack Russell terrier as a result.
The incoming barrage of female conversation caused Al to lose track of figures, forcing him to re-start his math, but not before Ethel said that she had to get down to their cottage on Cape Cod to see whether some curtains she had ordered had arrived, and had he seen that the people who lived across the street from them had purchased a new car, a Chevrolet Equinox?
“No, I didn’t,” Al said as he signed the check and handed it to Frechette, who gave him a polite “Thank you,” then added “Have a good week!”
The Leightons returned their best wishes, stood up, put on their coats and headed for the exit, but before they could open the door Frechette rushed up to them, gave Al a big hug and said “Thank you so much, you don’t know what this means to me,” and a close observer would have noticed tears in her eyes that caused little rivulets of mascara to overflow her lower eyelids.
“Well, hey, no problem,” Al said with a smile, then when the couple was outside, cracked “If I’d known I’d get that kind of response, I would have been tipping 18% years ago.”
It wasn’t until yesterday, when a news crew from local Channel 15 gathered on their lawn, that the Leightons realized they’d become viral celebrities, all because Al’s cognitive abilities were sidetracked by Ethel’s blather three nights before.
Don’t get any ideas, Suzie.
“Are you Al Leighton?” Lifestyle Reporter Alison Trumbull asked when he answered the door, a camera crew behind her.
“That’s me.”
“I was wondering if we could interview you.”
“What for?”
“That very generous tip you left for a poor waitress with two kids and a ‘deadbeat dad’ who’s a year behind in child support.”
“Oh, well, it was nothing, really,” Al said with false modesty.
“He should have been tipping that way all along,” Ethel said over her husband’s shoulder. “He throw nickels around like they’re man-hole covers.”
The reporter laughed at the shopworn local expression, but then turned the conversation back to the news value of the gratuity. “Ms. Frechette posted a tribute to you on the internet, and it’s gone viral,” she said.
“I’ve heard that corona thing’s going around,” Ethel replied.
“A couple of Michelob’s and their math skills drop to zero.”
“No, I mean it’s become a sensation, everyone thinks it’s so wonderful that you left a 200% tip on a $90 dinner tab.”
The elderly man is silent for a moment, then asks in a stunned voice “I did?”
“Yep, here, I took a screen shot of it on my phone,” the reporter says, and Ethel adjusts her “readers” to take a look.
“Al,” she says with a note of concern in her voice, “you left a $180 tip.”
He looks over his own glasses and sees that she is right; a $91.00 bill for two entrees, a fried calamari appetizer, a house salad and two rounds of drinks, but a total credit card payment of $271.
“Well, if you hadn’t de-railed my train of thought with your constant chatter, I would have got it right.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault, is it.”
“Yes.”
“It’s always my fault when you do something stupid.”
“If you could just keep quiet for five minutes for once in your life.”
As the argument escalates the television crew withdraws to a discreet distance, where the “liveshot” is wrapped up as a serious commentary on the wage-price contagion sweeping the nation rather than a human interest story.
“Another family torn apart by inflation–this is Alison Trumbull, your Channel 15 Action Reporter.”