Waitressing is a job that requires a certain passion for managing orders and connecting with customers. In the late summer of 2021, when the world was under the grip of the deadly pandemic, a waitress named Megan King at a Perkins restaurant turned into a prime example of kindness. The waitress’ kind gesture is making ripples throughout social media where scores of people are teary-eyed reading a note she shared.
Image source: Pexels | Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
In July, while Megan was serving her 17-hour shift, an elderly customer, a widow, walked into the restaurant to dine alone. It was Megan’s job to tend to her table. While serving her meals, Megan also took the time to interact and chat with the old woman, seeing that she was by herself. "We chatted for a few minutes. Small talk, nothing too deep,” Megan told Tyla.
Megan said the woman told her it’s been a while since she went out to eat alone. Perkins was an old favorite of hers. Once she finished her meal, she left just as quietly as she came. Shortly afterward, when Megan went there to clear the table, she was left speechless and crushed with emotion.
Image source: Pexels | Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
The aged customer had left a note for her along with the tip. The note, handwritten by the lady, delivered an emotional message. "Thank you very much for your kind service,” the note read. "This was my first time eating out alone since my husband passed. I was hoping I could get through it." Megan couldn’t stop herself from crying after reading the note. "As soon as I read that she'd lost her husband I lost it. I had to use the restroom to get myself together enough to tend to my other tables even though I didn't have time to rest," the waitress said.
Later, she posted the snapshot of the note, with a selfie on X, captioning the post as, "In pain." The post became widespread on social media and has 737,000 likes and nearly a thousand comments. Like Megan, the people on X were touched by the note.
@skywalkermcfly_ commented, “Amazing how impactful we can be in someone’s life by not knowing it unless we’re told. Being kind costs nothing. So give it away as much as you can because you’ll never know who you’re uplifting and what you’re uplifting them through.” @damomoo appreciated Megan's kind gesture, “Always better to just be a good person to other people because you just don't know what they're going through. You were an angel to that woman.”
One person even suggested that the post should be shared and the widow customer should be tracked down.
A month after this incident, in August 2021, Megan received another note from another widow who said that she too felt safe at the restaurant, eating alone. Like a halo of the butterfly effect spreading its light, Megan’s single gesture serves as a reminder for tons of people that kindness goes a long way.
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.