1) Introduction.

As you already know, for our last dinner in Florida, we wanted to go back to The Grande Lobby Bar for more of Chef Ha’s sushi at Reunion Resort. We simply didn’t get enough the first time since we’d arrived at 9:00, so we made sure this time to head over well before closing in order to procure adequate amounts of the sumptuous goodness. There was only one noticeable oversight, which was our failure to make a reservation. See, when we arrived last time just an hour before closing, the place had been relatively empty. But this time, during prime dining hours, it seems like everyone had the same idea. They wanted to eat.

Fancy that.

 

2) Confrontation.

Since there’s no host and only a couple of waiters on staff, we stood around like total doofuses — doofi? — for a good five minutes before shuffling off to the side to wait for a place to sit. That was when two men — a middle-aged Asian and a twenty-something Caucasian — sauntered up next to us, tapped a server on the shoulder, and told him they wanted to eat. Now. The server replied that it would be over an hour wait for a table, but four spots were about to open at the bar — the exact number in our party, whaddya know — if they wanted to snag some. The twenty-something Caucasian looked uncomfortable as he whispered to the middle-aged Asian that he thought our party was waiting for the next space. The man rolled his eyes, glanced at us, and said, “Are you waiting for a table?”

“Yep!” I responded.

“Great,” he mumbled as he walked towards the bar. “We’ll just take these seats at the bar, then.” And then he and his underwhelmingly soft-spoken dining companion did just that.

Wait.

What?

He meant table… literally — as in not just a place to sit and eat but an actual table.

 

3) Petulance.

I felt my blood pressure rise. The Anger was swelling inside of me and, as much as I try to be all Zen in these moments, I often fail as rational, controlled thought gets replaced by images of karmic chandeliers falling and crushing impatient, middle-aged, suit-wearing men who think they get first dibs on sushi just because they’re Asian when they try to steal OUR mother-effing seats at the mother-effing bar.

So I did what any normal, self-righteous, 30-something Caucasian woman attended by two other Caucasians and a Puerto Rican would do: I tattled.

Not 30-seconds after the seat-stealers were resting their tushes on the freshly vacated bar stools, the bartender looked at us and asked if we were waiting for a place to sit. “We were,” I steamed. “Longer than those two,” and I exaggeratedly flung my head in the general direction of the gentleman who now occupied two of the four vacated seats.

It was my finest impersonation of a petulant child facing her first real experience of Life Isn’t Fair.

 

4) Winning. (Right?)

“Give me one sec,” the bartender smiled.

Huh?

He walked over to the seat-stealers, said something to them with an apologetic look on his face, and they sheepishly removed themselves from the bar area to wait in the lobby.

VINDICATION!

 

5) Retrospect.

Only… I had this terrible feeling as our party walked to our rightful seats at the bar. I felt… bad.

Leave it to my conscience to make me feel like crap when even a judge in the pettiest Court of Fair Line Waiting Laws would rule our actions completely justified, since it was them who cut in front of us.

 

6) Right and Wrong. And Wronger.

But this, my friends, is where we delve into a deeper level of right and wrong. While the middle-aged Asian knew he was doing wrong in the obvious school yard bully sense of the word, I knew I was doing wrong to my self. To the person I want to be.

If I do the scary thing and actually think about it, I have to admit to myself that I don’t want to be the person who gut-reacts childishly to a childish situation. I don’t want to be the person who shamelessly flaunts her ugly to the world. And I certainly don’t want to be the thirty-year-old grown-ass woman who tattles.

My friend Missy felt bad too, and she suggested we buy them a drink when the same two gentlemen approached some vacated bar seats thirty minutes later. We told the bartender our intention, but he just smiled and said he was taking care of it. I felt better, but still. Those guys didn’t know I wanted to make things right.

Yet even if they did, would it make a difference?

My self-induced psychological damage had already been done.

 

7) Lesson.

I realized that if I’d never made a big deal of it to begin with, I wouldn’t have this feeling. This feeling that I’d let myself down. Sure, I’d probably still be steaming on a sofa in another part of the lobby, but I’d get over it. I wouldn’t still be thinking about it nearly two weeks later.

And that’s what we do every time we cheat ourselves out of a chance to be decent. When we choose not to just take life as it comes — seat stealers and all — rather than jumping up on our self-righteous horses.

 

8) Clarity.

Look.

I’m not saying you should let people walk all over you in ever scenario of every day of your life. But the fact of the matter is, that man — that grown man in a business suit in the bar of a hotel lobby — wasn’t doing anything to me. So why was I taking it so personally? He was wronging himself. He knew it. We knew it. Even his twenty-something compadre knew it.

And really, I’m pretty sure that’s retribution enough.