Reply #54: yay, happy endings! love this story.

[NuttyFluffers]

i especially like this part:

"The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi," Diaz says. "The kid was like, 'You know everybody here. Do you own this place?'"

"No, I just eat here a lot," Diaz says he told the teen. "He says, 'But you're even nice to the dishwasher.'"

Diaz replied, "Well, haven't you been taught you should be nice to everybody?"

"Yea, but I didn't think people actually behaved that way," the teen said.

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that is one of the most important parts of the story to me. when seeing the workers at the diner be kind to Julio, the kid immediately assumed the power dynamic as the reason why 'pleasantries' are exchanged.

when informed that, no, there was no 'overlord power' demanding kindness the kid sort of gets it... but then gets confused. being nice to waiters or managers may make sense, because they have some sort of power over you and your food -- but a dishwasher is essentially powerless in this customer-server dynamic. why bother with kindness to even the powerless?

then comes the moral of kindness for its own sake; kindness being its own revolution. the kid heard it but didn't truly believed it existed.

all the child has seen before is 'might makes right'. he's even seen 'mutually beneficial selfishness'. but he has not seen genuine kindness, nor has he experienced the true transformative depths of its simple 'magic,' until that night.

suddenly 'might makes right' becomes a waste of energy. suddenly hypocritical veneers of courtesy seem tiresome. there is something better -- and this better thing isn't part of the fairy tales of childhood, but can be a very real part of reality today.

this can be a landmark moment in a person's education: the pleasures of life do not have to be taken forcefully; they do not have to be coerced cynically; they can be given -- and received -- freely. that is magic.

what better way to change the path of someone than an open-armed, welcome invitation. what more permanent way to stop animosity than to embrace friendship. what more frightening a revolution to the politics of hate than the peace of kindness...