THE FOLDED NAPKIN

A Trucker's Story

"If this doesn't light your fire..your wood is wet!"


I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about
hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that
he would be a good, reliable busboy, but I had never
had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I
wanted one. I wasn't sure how my customers would react
to Stevie. He was short, a little dumpy with the
smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of
Downs Syndrome. I wasn' t worried about most of my
trucker customers because truckers don't generally
care who buses tables as long as the meatloaf platter
is good and the pies are homemade.

The four-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned
me. The mouthy college kids traveling to school; the
yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with
their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded "truck
stop germ" the pairs of white-shirted business men on
expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress
wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be
uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him
for the first few weeks.

I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie
had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger,
and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him
as their official truck stop mascot.

After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the
customers thought of him. He was a 21-year-old in blue
jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please,
but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt
and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a
bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie
got done with the table.

Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a
table until after the customers were finished. He
would hover in the background, shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room
until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the
empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto
his cart and meticulously wipe the table off with a
practiced flourish of his rag.

If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would
pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing
his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he
tried to please each and every person he met.

Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother,
a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for
cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits
in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their
social worker, who stopped to check on him every so
often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks.
Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the
difference between them being able to live together
and Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why the
restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last
August, the first morning in three years that Stevie
missed work.

He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new
valve or something put in his heart. His social worker
said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart
problems at an early age so this wasn't unexpected,
and there was a good chance he would come through the
surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few
months. A ripple of excitement ran through the staff
later that morning when word came that he was out of
surgery, in recovery, and doing fine.

Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did
a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good
news. Belle Ringer, one of our regular trucker
customers, stared at the sight of this 50-year-old
grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his
table.Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot
Belle Ringer a withering look.

He grinned. "OK, Frannie, what was that all about?" he
."We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery
and going to be okay." "I was wondering where he was.
I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery
about?"Frannie quickly told Belle Ringer and the other
two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie's
surgery, then sighed: "Yeah, I'm glad he is going to
be OK," she said. "But I don't know how he and his Mom
are going to handle all the bills.

From what I hear, they're barely getting by as it is."
Belle Ringer nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried
off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't
had time to round up a busboy to replace Stevie and
really didn't want to replace him, the girls were
busing their own tables that day until we decided what
to do. After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my
office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand
and a funny look on her face "What's up?" I asked "I
didn't get that table where Belle Ringer and his
friends were sitting cleared off after they left, and
Pony Pete and Tony Tipper were sitting there when I
got back to clean it off," she said. "This was folded
and tucked under a coffee cup."

She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell
onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big,
bold letters, was printed "Something For Stevie".
"Pony Pete asked me what that was all about," she
said, "so I told him about Stevie and his Mom and
everything, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at
Pete, and they ended up giving me this." She handed me
another paper napkin that had "Something For Stevie"
scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked
within its folds. Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny
eyes, shook her head and said simply: "truckers"

That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the
first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work.His
placement worker said he's been counting the days
until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't
matter at all that it was a holiday. He called 10
times in the past week, making sure we knew he was
coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his
job was in jeopardy. I arranged to have his mother
bring him to work. I then met them in the parking lot
and invited them both to celebrate his day back.

Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop
grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for
the back room where his apron and busing cart were
waiting. "Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast," I said.
I took him and his mother by their arms. "Work can
wait for a minute. To celebrate you coming back,
breakfast for you and your mother is on me!" I led
them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the
room.

I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following
behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing
over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning
truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in
front of the big table. Its surface was covered with
coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting
slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins.
"First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this
mess," I said. I tried to sound stern. Stevie looked
at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of
the napkins. It had "Something for Stevie" printed on
the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell
onto the table.

Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins
peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name
printed or scrawled on it. I turned to his mother.
"There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that
table, all from truckers and trucking companies that
heard about your problems. "Happy Thanksgiving,"Well,
it got real noisy about that time, with everybody
hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears, as
well.

But you know what's funny? While everybody else was
busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie,
with a big, big smile on his face, was busy clearing
all the cups and dishes from the table.

Best worker I ever hired. Plant a seed and watch it
grow.

If you shed a tear, hug yourself,
because you are a compassionate person.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN