The Ol’ Draw N’ Dash
“There used to be a restaurant in the town I went to college in that was basically a knock-off of Applebee’s called Garfield’s. It had paper strewn across all the tables and crayons so the wait staff could write their names down for the customers and the customers could write whatever they wanted.
I was in there one afternoon with my girlfriend when the mother and daughter in the booth behind us decided to leave without paying for their meal. The waitress was at first furiousbut then began laughing when she realized that the kid had written down their real names repeatedly in crayon all over the table. They were caught by the police less than an hour later, according to the police report.”
Waitress Saves The Day
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“I worked in a Cafe in Adelaide where we had a few of those small, plastic children’s tables with chairs.
We always had coloring books, pencils, etc. for the kids to have fun with while their parents sat at the normal tables. Roughly two years ago, I had a couple (I’d say mid-thirties) come in with their daughter. The mother was quite evidently a cancer patient (very thin, no hair with bandana etc). It was a Saturday morning, so there were plenty of kids at the children’s play tables. I walked over to the bunch of children who were all drawing and singing, basically just having a great time. I’m a fairly bubbly, happy woman so I went up to the kids (about six of them) and asked them collectively what everyone was drawing.
We had a couple bunnies and a couple horses, but then I saw what the daughter of the cancer patient had drawn. It was just a gravestone that had a couple flowers and the letters ‘RIP’ scribbled on it. The young girl (probably 8 or so years old) looked up at me and said, ‘This is my mum soon.’ I didn’t know what to say. I also didn’t want her parents to see the picture as the mom didn’t look like she was in the best mental state by the way she ordered food / her general facial expressions. I quickly went behind the counter and grabbed a bunch of drinking straws and suggested everyone try to make the longest straw. They were all keen and once they got into it, I quickly swiped the drawing and discarded it. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do or not and I’m well aware using bulk plastic straws for novelty reasons isn’t the best thing for the environment, but I felt I had to do that.”
It Wasn’t What She Drew, But What It Meant To Her
“I was waiting in a local Mexican restaurant for my (very late) date to show up. I was dinking around on my phone when the only other person in the room – a little girl of around 4 – started talking to me. Her mom was a server there and her dad was a cook. She hung out in that waiting area (kind of like a small living room) and colored when her parents worked the same shift.
At one point, I saw her scribble a name at the top and sprint off to the kitchen saying, ‘I’m going to give this to someone. Watch my stuff!’ I did. She came back a minute later, dragging her feet and still holding the ripped-out page of her coloring book. ‘She said she already has too many from today,’ she said sullenly.
‘Well I didn’t get one yet,’ I replied.
‘Oh! What’s your name?’ She put her crayon down on the page as if to write my name, but must have gotten impatient since she crossed out the other name and handed it to me. She was so proud she went and told the original recipient that the picture found a home. My date arrived as the little girl came back, so I said goodbye and tucked the picture away to avoid the mole sauce.
I still have the picture somewhere.”
Apparently, You’re Never Too Young To Hit On The Cute Waitress
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“When I was about 7, I wrote my home phone number on the table because I thought the waitress was cute. She called the number thinking my dad wrote it (note: don’t know how she mixed up a 7-year-old’s handwriting with a 40-year-old man’s). My mom answered the phone and accused my dad of cheating.
After hearing them yell at each other for a while, I finally told them the truth. Needless to say, they still laugh about it/at me to this day.”
She’s Always Had A Flair For The Dramatics
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“My niece was always quite the drama queen. About 9 years ago, we were at a restaurant waiting to order and I saw her drawing a lovely landscape. It was adorable watching her draw a sun wearing sunglasses, grass, flowers…and a tombstone.
Concerned, I asked what she was drawing. She said, ‘It is me. We waited so long here, I died.’ She is an even more dramatic teenager now. Help me.”
This Work Of Art Left The Waiter Lost For Words
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“It wasn’t what they drew but what they did.
I worked at a Tex-Mex restaurant as a waiter for a while. Sizzling fajitas were one of our huge sellers and if you’ve ever gotten them, you know the skillets they come out on can be ripping hot (hence the sizzling). I started bussing this one table and noticed one of the fajita skillets wasn’t inside the wood they’re usually carried in. Ok… Kinda weird but after 20 minutes, those metal plates aren’t hot anymore so it’s not impossible for a customer to pick them up and move em. I tried to grab this skillet but it was stuck on the table and not budging. After literally prying this thing off with a fork, I came to see a whole pack of crayons melted on the skillet onto the table.
This kid moved the skillet, while it was still screaming hot, on to some crayons in what I can only assume was an effort to fuse skillet and table into one being. I was still new, so I just sat there, astonished, for like five minutes trying to comprehend it. What motivated the kid to do this? Why didn’t his parents stop him? And what do I do now?!
I told my manager cause I was confused as to what to do. I spent the next hour scraping at melted crayons with a spoon and learned a valuable lesson. Don’t tell anyone if you don’t wanna clean it.”
She Was Getting A Head Start On Her Career
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“She didn’t leave a drawing, but I had an 8-year-old take the entire order for ‘the kid’s table’ in purple crayon for about seven kids and herself. She told me she had aspirations to also be a waitress.
Unfortunately, I trusted her order and she got it slightly wrong. Hopefully, she has contemplated other career options. Her order is still on my fridge though!”
That Picture Still Haunts Her
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“There was a coloring page that was of a little girl holding a dog. The little girl who colored it in (who is 4) drew a rope around the girl’s neck and the only color she put on the girl was making her face purple. We still have it hung up behind the bar out of the sight of customers.
Sometimes I look at the picture and worry about that little girl, sometimes I just laugh.”
The Best Art Always Has A Message
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“Years ago, in a small town, a doctor and his wife with their three very well behaved boys came in for dinner. I used to love this family. They were always polite and ordered well.
The second or third time I was taking care of them, magic happened. I was taking their orders when their youngest, no older than 8, handed me a piece of paper from his Blue’s Clues notebook.
Scrawled in very legible writing, in red crayon: ‘MAY I HAVE A PLATE OF BACON PLEASE????’
Yes, he even drew a strip of bacon.”
He Put His Whole Heart In His Art
“When I was a waiter in college, I had a table of two that consisted of a mom in her mid-to-late 30’s and her 9-year-old son. The kid had a set of markers and a sketch pad, and he was writing what I thought was a nickname as a graffiti tag over and over – it was D-Nice. Honestly, the kid was pretty talented for a 9-year-old, and I complimented him on his artistic flair and asked his name, thinking it was a ‘D’ name like Derek or David or something, but he said it was Brett. So I asked what his tag stood for then, and he said it was because his mom’s name was Denise, and D-Nice was his tag as a tribute to her because he loved her. I thought that was awesome. I’ll never forget Brett, and hope he tagged his mom’s name all over the place when he got older.”
It Takes An Intense Kid To Draw Those Kinds Of Pictues
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“A 9-year-old drew a very accurate picture of the playground. The swings and slides were depicted just as they are. He also added all the other kids. The picture was well done and I would have loved it if not for the fact that every child in the picture had limbs askew and red pools around their heads and torsos. I asked the boy what he drew. He told me, ‘They all got hurt.’ Then he said, ‘I’m here,’ and pointed to an empty spot on the page. Then he said, ‘and you’re there too Miss,’ and pointed to one of the ruined bodies. He had a single father who was a MMA fighter. I assume he just watched a lot of gory things because he was otherwise a very nice child.”
Outstanding Character And Stupendous Behavior
“Not a drawing, but certainly one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in 6 years serving. A man was holding his young son while the kid shoved crayons into a burning hot tealight, smoke and fumes and all.
He just stood there, holding the kid with a smile like he admired his son for his stupidity. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
It Wasn’t Just What He Drew, It Was What He Said
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“A family of 8 was sitting next to me. The kid drawing was a chubby toddler making noises while scribbling on his paper kids’ menu. His mom asked him, ‘What are you drawing, sweetie?’
He replied in this old, raspy voice, ‘Gotta draw my own milkshake because it’s taking too long.’ The family lost it while the mom scolded him.”
She Left Her Art Everywhere She Went
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“As a kid, I had this whole made up story world with humanoid cats and I used to write books on the computer about them. They were stored, password protected, on hidden floppy disks; at around 9 I learned the hard way that my crappy dad didn’t respect even a tiny bit of my privacy, so he would go through my diaries, even the locked ones, and then make fun of me. I would draw detailed pictures of all the characters, have different outfit pictures drawn for different occasions, like a princess dress versus the character’s adventure clothes.
I had a couple characters that I would always draw on coloring pages or the paper table coverings when we went out to eat. They were often accompanied by short stories if I had time. I had made servers drawings of themselves as cat-people more than once.
My mom ended up letting me draw one of my characters to get added to a mural she was having painted in the nursery for my (at the time) unborn sister. My uncle was a professional artist and he did this gorgeous fairytale castle mural. He basically traced the drawing of my Princess cat onto transfer paper and put it right on the wall, then helped me paint it in. It’s a really nice memory.”
A Hidden Meaning
“An adorable little girl came up to me and asked for ’empty pictures’.
It took me a while to realize that she meant blank papers.
I had to take a moment to get myself back together because the concept of her thinking that the papers were pictures which hadn’t been drawn yet almost brought me to tears.”
That One Free-Handed Drawing
“I worked in a bar that acted as a ‘community cafe’ in the day, so the walls were decorated with children’s drawings – mostly pages from coloring books.
There was one freehand picture, among the badly scribbled-in Elsas and Spidermen colorings. It was of a blobby four-legged potato man with the word ‘no’ written in large, crooked letters above it.
Then I flipped the drawing over and, in the same handwriting, just the word, ‘Die.’
It really tickled me.”
He’ll Never Hang Out With Her And Her Friends Again
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“When I was in college, my much older sister invited me to dinner at this Italian restaurant with her husband and friends.
I knew no one. I was a nerdy college student and my sister worked as a dentist and my brother-in-law was a banker. I had no conversation connections to them or their friends.
After sitting awkwardly quiet for several minutes, I noticed crayons on the table. I picked them up and colored a random rainbow design on the butcher paper tablecloth. None of the other dinner guests acknowledged my drawing. I just doodled and doodled as they discussed the adult world.
Soon later, the waiter came over to refresh our drinks. He noticed my rainbow doodle and immediately started to fawn over my design: ‘This a fabulous piece of art! We are going to display this masterpiece on the BIG fridge in our kitchen!’
The waiter then takes the butcher paper and tears it into two sections. He takes my weird little drawing back to the kitchen.
This is the moment when my sister leans over to me and whispers: ‘The waiter thinks you are mentally handicapped.’
I was so embarrassed.”
A True Hero
“I used to pick up my nephew regularly from his infant’s school as his mother, my sister, is a waste of space. We’d always go to the same restaurant after school to have a little one-on-one time. One day, our waitress pulled me to the side and pulled out a picture he had drawn. It took me a moment to realize what I was seeing before it focused into a picture of a woman with blood surrounding her and needles scattered around. The waitress was very concerned and I mean borderline calling police and social services and not letting him leave with me.
I asked my nephew, who was about 6 at the time, what was this about. He explained this was what his mommy looked like most nights. I broke down crying, the waitress broke down crying, then I called social services myself from the manager’s office. They placed him in my care as a temporary measure and investigated.
Turns out, my sister had started to take opioids via needles and accidentally broke a vein one night, hence the blood. Now, six years later, I don’t know if she is clean, but my nephew lives with me and my family as if he is my own and he has never been happier.
Still, my nephew did miss meals and went to school in dirty clothes a couple of times before the opioids were involved and each time it happened, I would take him to my home with my wife and kids and make excuses for my sister’s behavior. We would help by having him for a few nights, get him new clothes, make sure he ate, paid for his school dinners, etc. In the end, we were hurting him more by doing these things, then just sending him back to her to start again a few weeks later. Please remember, this was a 5/6-year-old boy who had to learn that sometimes Mommy couldn’t feed him when he got home because she didn’t care enough. I have honestly tried to make her a part of his life but was met with complete disinterest.
I am still really thankful to that waitress for having noticed the drawing before it was thrown away.”
That Little Note Never Fails To Put A Smile On His Face
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“One time this really sweet little girl said she drew me a picture and not to look at it until she left. It was folded up on the table.
So I walked over after she left, and she’d written in crayon, really big, ‘U are gay.’ I died laughing and kept it.”
They Showed The Manager What They Really Thought Of Him
“A family brought some extremely loud toys with them to a nice restaurant (Macaroni Grill/Cheesecake Factory style). Patrons around them complained because they had three kids who each had one or two extremely loud toys (car with a police siren, kids megaphone/microphone, kids boombox with animal sounds, etc, etc). My manager came over and offered to relocate them, they refused. He gave them a free appetizer but said they would have to put the toys away.
The kids proceeded to draw at least five pictures of my manager getting murdered by: jungle cats, tanks, a game of hangman, death incarnate, and some other random stuff. When they left, they left the pictures on the table. My manager proceeded to show every employee in the restaurant all the while laughing himself to death. We got them framed for him for Christmas.”
