Sunday, Texas, Busted

One thing I truly make it a habit not to do is to strike up conversations with strangers in restrooms.

(Now that’s what I call an opening line. Wait, it gets worse.)

This weekend I was in San Antonio and decided to drive up to Austin, where I lived for a few years, on Sunday. Along the way I stopped at the Taco Cabana in New Braunfels for some lunch. (I’ve always felt the Cabana chain could be a hit beyond Texas, by the way. But you don’t come here for thoughts on marketing. You come here for… well, why do you? Anyway.)

As I had my lunch a big family group, maybe 10-12 people, was sitting nearby. At one point I went into the restroom, where a young man of the group, age five I’d guess, was readying himself. He went his way, I mine. There was no one else in the room, but he started talking in a conversational tone.

Then I heard him say, “Do you hear me?” Under my aforementioned policy, I didn’t reply.

Then he asked again, “Do you hear me?” At this point it didn’t seem polite to ignore him, so I answered, “Yes, I hear you.”

He asked, “Did you go to church today?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I live in Washington DC, so that’s where my church is. I don’t know the churches around here.”

“You could go to the Baptist church! It’s right by Taco Cabana!”

“Well, but I’m staying in San Antonio, not New Braunfels.”

“That’s where we went! In San Antonio!”

At this point I have washed up and am eager to exit the restroom and the conversation. For obvious, and multiplying, reasons. But my interrogator emerges to wash his hands, except he’s not washing them, he’s gesturing with them as he tries to give me directions to the Baptist church.

Being about five, he’s not exactly Google maps when it comes to directions. But he is certainly giving it his all. And as ready as I am to move on, it’s pretty hard to walk out in the middle of a sentence by a child who is earnestly trying to get me back onto the straight and narrow. 

At last, Dad comes in to check on him and I’m able to slip out. Then we proceed back to our respective tables. I leave first, and on my way out my new friend catches my eye, smiles and waves and says ‘Bye!’.

It is the smile of one who has done his duty today, and it is offered not in judgment but in kindness.

Sunday, Texas, busted.