I was at an airport restaurant in Chicago getting dinner while waiting for my delayed flight. A waiter came up and after the usual "What would you like to drink" etc he glanced at my big stomach and said:
Waiter: Boy or girl?
Me: Boy. (I was expecting him to ask what I'd like to eat, so a though crossed my mind that I generally don't eat children for dinner.)
Waiter (pointing at his name tag that said 'Constantine'): You should name him that! It means "born to be a king"! ... Or a waiter. What can I get for you? (Who knows how many times he'd used that joke, but it was still funny.)
After dinner as I was paying my bill:
Waiter (pointing at my name on the credit card): Not many people named that here, but a lot in my country.
He turned out to be from Bulgaria. I happened to spend a summer there about 20 years ago, and it was a beautiful country. I told him so. He went on to tell me about studying Russian as a kid, and that one of his favorite memories was memorizing Russian poetry. I don't know if he was telling the truth. He went on to quote Pushkin for me in very good Russian:
Я помню чудное мгновенье:
Передо мной явилась ты,
Как мимолетное виденье,
Как гений чистой красоты.
We probably won't name our second son after a Bulgarian waiter from a Chicago airport who quotes Pushkin in an unaccented Russian, but he did make an impression.
No comments:
Post a Comment