Sometimes it's the smallest of things that can make your day.
As an after-church treat, we headed to a late breakfast at Friendly's restaurant on Route 30 East.
After the five of us had piled into a booth, a young waitress appeared. She was smiling, and, right off the bat, her pleasantness was infectious.
When she mistakenly referred to one of our daughters with shaggy hair as a boy — and we corrected her — she apologized and told us how she had grown up a tomboy.
When she took our orders, she memorized them in her head, a feat of slight amazement to us.
She treated us as the most important people in her world for the next half-hour, always there at our sides at just the right time without being burdensome.
And always with a smile.
A few days later, I was still thinking about the nice waitress with the genuine Life Is Good grin.
I knew how little most waitresses make. The dismissiveness and downright rudeness from some of their customers. The unpredictable hours they must keep.
I wondered if she was always that upbeat.
Turns out she is, despite the odds.
Stormy Ashton, who just turned 20, has been waitressing since she was 14. You can do that in California.
Half of her paycheck she gave to her mother for rent. Her parents were divorced.
When she turned 15, her mother went to jail and Ashton and her brother and sister moved to Strasburg to live with grandparents.
She took on two waitressing jobs. She didn't have a car yet and walked two miles — each way — to work.
One day, her sister got into a fight at school. The other girl's mother stormed into the restaurant where Ashton and her sister worked.
The next day, Ashton and her sister were fired on the spot. The mother had complained to corporate headquarters that she had seen the sisters spitting in food. Untrue, but no questions were asked.
Ashton remembered something her dad had drilled into her: "There's no such thing as a problem. No matter what it is, you find a way to take care of it."
So she found another waitressing job. Two, actually.
At Lampeter-Strasburg High School, Ashton was excelling. Her junior year, she received the class's prestigious Burrowes Scholar Award, given to one student in each class who has demonstrated exemplary academic achievement.
Near the end of her senior year, the young woman who dreamed of writing and illustrating children's books had a full ride set to Temple University's Tyler School of Art.
Despite her good grades, she was careening dangerously through drugs and alcohol.
Then she got pregnant.
Rather than be resentful for what she had to give up, she calls her son "the best thing that ever happened to me."
"As soon as I got pregnant, everything stopped immediately," she says. "I thank him every day for saving my life, because there is a good chance I would not still be alive if not for him."
She felt having a child trumps all other commitments or hopes. So she now works two waitressing jobs, working on weekends and nights so she can be with her son when he most needs her.
She no longer has a relationship with the father, but is quick to praise him for being there for his son.
She makes $2.83 an hour, plus tips. On a bad night, she's left work with a mere $8 in her pocket.
Yet, unlike many, she's a waitress who reports all her tips as income and pays taxes on it.
"I feel so lucky to live in a country where I have the freedoms that I do and I can do whatever I want," she says by way of explanation. "So of course I'm going to pay my taxes."
She puts up with crap as a waitress. She gets stiffed regardless of her performance. She's seen that being hungry and tired can bring out the worst in people.
But she also sees the best in people. And she has honed people skills and is a waitress customers request.
"You can change people's hearts," says Ashton, who now lives with her stepmother near Landisville.
She's learned that if a family comes in after a trip to Dutch Wonderland and the kids are hungry and sunburned, you bring their food out first. She's learned that some people just want to order and not hear the specials. She's learned that people like to be remembered.
In a few weeks, she's going to start classes at HACC, Lancaster campus to pursue her dream of a career as an artist or in communications. The college has day care for her son.
You can find Ashton waitressing at Friendly's on weekend days. She doesn't have a name tag, but she's the one with wide hazel eyes and a dainty pierced nose. And a smile.
Please leave her a 20 percent tip. She deserves it.
