Most Likely to...

Not much happened at the restaurant yesterday.  The same people came and got the same spots on the hierarchy of charts.  The thing that tells us what tables we will be serving, and, incidentally, what we’re worth to the company (or at least to our direct managers).  Needless to say, I stayed consistent with my two-tops.  It reminds me a bit of those “Favorite” lists they come up with in High School.  You know the ones.  Most Beautiful, Most Handsome, Most Likely to Succeed, Funniest, Most Likely to end up on America’s Most Wanted, etc.  My most memorable brush with this age old tradition was when I was actually nominated my senior year for Prettiest Eyes.  It came as quite a shock since I didn’t realize that my green eyes were really that exotic, and no one had ever mentioned them before.  I will say it was definitely a boost for my nerdy, carrot-topped, chubby self-esteem.  It was a bit of beauty validation after having just spent the last two and a half years in braces fighting acne and (unbeknownst to me at the time) terrible, terrible bangs.  


I will never forget a football player strutting past me in the usual “pimp limp” that, for reasons I will never fully comprehend, was a necessary trademark of our fighting Lions in blue and white.  As he passed, he glanced my way, smiled, and murmured, “Hey, pretty eyes.”  A) He had never spoken to me before in my life, and B) was I really blushing?  How embarrassing!  How cliché could you get!  Yet….it was effective.  I’m pretty sure I even let out the teenage girl giggle, an act to which I was certain my wise-beyond-my-years, sophisticated, 17 year old self had never succumbed before.  


The day came for the all-school assembly in which the “Favorites” were announced.  I had seen my competition (gawked at them in fact, sizing up their less worthy irises) and felt pretty good about my chances.  Granted, I had also been nominated as Most Likely to Succeed, but that was child’s play compared to the prestige the other nomination promised.  Finally, my category was called; I waited with baited breath, my prepared acceptance speech swimming behind my noteworthy eyes.  Then…..I lost.  My name was not called.  The girl whose name was called was a girl who wore contacts.  Colored contacts!  And not even normal colored contacts.  They were purple!  I lost the title of Prettiest Eyes to a girl with purple contacts!  Really?  As I sat there, too deflated to move, I realized something that day.  You may have pretty eyes, but they need to be artificial to be the prettiest.  Now, however, it dawns on me that the reason I did not win in my category that day (I didn’t get Most Likely to Succeed either) was because they didn’t have the right category listed, the one I would have been a shoe-in to win.  Most Likely to Have the Feminine Balls to Marry a Hot, Intelligent Man and Move to New York to Wait Tables for Unappreciative Bosses and Patrons While Pursuing Her Real Dreams.  Put that in your contacts and look through it, pretty eyes!