Our Waitress Had Gills

[OBXMom]

Today we went out to eat at a restaurant with a gluten free menu. We felt guilty because our 8 year old always feels bad after he eats out, but he has been feeling bad lately even when we eat at home, and we all needed a change of scenery. We gave the waitress our Triumph Dining card and explained everything and she was so sympathetic.

THEN she knelt down and showed my son where she had had gills removed when she was a baby. The look on his face was priceless. I thought through several messages that could have been hidden in this interaction (life is hard for many of us, at least you don't have a scar, others I'm embarassed to admit) and discarded them all. I settled on, look what we would never have learned if celiac disease had not become a part of the family.

[gfjayhawk]

It's funny what can induce people to share things about themselves, isn't it?

[Fiddle-Faddle]

How do you remove gills?????

[Guhlia]

Forgive me if this is rude, but when I read the title of this post I thought for sure you were going to tell us about some "cool" new thing that all the kids are doing, some strange scarification process or something.

[JNBunnie1]

Forgive me if this is rude, but when I read the title of this post I thought for sure you were going to tell us about some "cool" new thing that all the kids are doing, some strange scarification process or something.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

[OBXMom]

Surgically, I guess, given that there were scars. Apparently we all have gills in the womb, another interesting fact I learned from our waitress.

[OBXMom]

Oh, no! I hope I'm not giving anyone any ideas - wouldn't that be awful? I could google gills to see if there is anything odd out there, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to know . . .

[home-based-mom]

My guess is your waitress was ridiculed relentlessly by other children as she was growing up and had an extremely painful childhood. That made her sensitive to the feelings of children who for one reason or another are "different" and cannot "blend in" and be like everybody else as kids want to do.

So she let herself be vulnerable in front of total strangers in order to let your son know that others who are somehow different can grow up and take a place in society, that he is not the only one who isn't "like everybody else" and that's OK.

Hats off to her!

[blueeyedmanda]

Surgically, I guess, given that there were scars. Apparently we all have gills in the womb, another interesting fact I learned from our waitress.

Never knew this, you really do learn something new everyday. Thanks for sharing!

[OBXMom]

You are so right, and I didn't mention before that she was totally sweet and adorable. Hope I didn't seem critical, I was actually hoping to hear some other interesting things people had learned on their celiac journeys that they might not have learned otherwise.