A Christmas Story

Context: Little Sister, Baby Sister, and I have a tradition of getting lunch together on Christmas Eve. Two years ago, we had a particularly special experience.

The first miracle was that we went to Chili's at all.

I don't really like Chili's. My sisters don't really like Chili's. We hold the Annual Little Sisters' Christmas Eve Lunch at a different restaurant every year, but we choose restaurants that we, you know, enjoy. Yet against all logic, we agreed that this year, we were going to Chili's.

So at Chili's we arrived, wearing our festive holiday outfits. And when I say festive, I'm not kidding around. We wore red, green, gold, and silver. Baby Sister had jewelry made from tiny jingle bells. We've even been known to put wrapping paper bows in our hair.

Your average restaurant is fairly empty on Christmas Eve, and Chili's was no exception. This Chili's had two sections, a bar and dining room to the left of the entryway and a regular dining room to the right. A few men were seated at the bar, but nobody was in the other dining room.

The hostess smiled when we walked in. She grabbed three menus and began to lead us into the empty dining room to her right...

...and then stopped. Something had stopped her. She stood there for a second, did an about-face, and led us instead to a booth near the bar. That was the second miracle.

Not that we wanted to sit by the bar. In fact, as we sat down I was wishing we'd been seated in the dining room instead. I learned when I was in Europe that people who have been drinking are often unpleasant to be around, and the Annual Little Sisters' Christmas Eve Lunch should not be unpleasant.

Almost immediately, the older man sitting closest to us turned around and began to talk to us.

"Do you want these chips and queso?" he said. "They make you order food if you drink this early, but I don't want them. I promise I've barely touched them!"

"Um," we said.

It is generally not a good idea for young ladies to accept chips and queso from strange men. I would normally never do it. I would normally never encourage my young sisters to do it. But something made me feel like I should.

"Thanks," we said. We gingerly dug into the chips and queso. We hoped that he'd leave us alone.

 

Photo courtesy of Little Sister.

But our new acquaintance was either socially inept, or a little tipsy, or very lonely to be drinking alone early on Christmas Eve, or a combination of all three of those things, because he didn't seem to get that we were trying to brush him off. He kept looking over at us and beaming at us and talking to us.

It is generally an even worse idea for young ladies to allow possibly tipsy men to begin conversations with them. I was aware of this. But after a few times of him not getting that we wanted to be left alone, I had a thought.

I thought about one of my uncles, who hasn't spent Christmas with his family for many years, partly due to choice and partly due to addictions. If my uncle were sitting alone at a bar on Christmas Eve (and, I reflected, for all I knew he was), I would want somebody to be kind to him.

I told my sisters this later. "We thought that exact same thing!" they said. And that was another miracle.

So, cautiously, we began to talk, really talk, to the man at the bar. We told him our first names and a little about ourselves. We told him we were sisters.

"No!" he exclaimed, genuinely surprised. "I don't believe it! You're sisters? But you look nothing alike!"

"It's true!" we laughed.

He shook his head in amazement. "I don't believe it!"

The next miracle came in an unexpected form.

The only thing that Baby Sister was super excited about for our Chili's lunch was ordering and drinking a bottle of root beer. Because root beer, of course, tastes better from the bottle. Baby Sister drank it heartily.

 

Baby Sister + root beer = true love

Now, Baby Sister is tiny, but when she burps, it's loud. Runner Bean once scored her burps on a scale of 1 to 10, and she got high marks.

So when Baby Sister burped partway through the bottle of root beer, everybody heard it.

BUUURP.

Us. The waiters. Everyone at the bar. They all turned to look at Baby Sister. Baby Sister doesn't really get embarrassed often, so she kind of just shrugged it off. And so everyone smiled or laughed, and the room got about ten degrees jollier.

Our friend was beaming. "You remind me of my little sister!" he exclaimed. "She's tiny, but boy, can she burp!"

He was excited when Baby Sister burped again (loudly again). "Just like my sister!"

We kept talking and talking to him about Christmas in general. And he kept talking and talking right back. Before we knew it, it was time for us to head home. Then we did discovered the last miracle.

Our waiter came over with a huge smile on his face. "Your meal has already been paid for," he told us. Tip and all.

Our first reaction was that the man we'd been talking to had paid for our meal. But then a man at the other end of the bar waved at us and said with a grin, "Merry Christmas!"

We were really touched!

We left an extra tip for our waiter, wrote thank-you notes for the queso and our meals, and wished everyone a Merry Christmas on our way out the door.

When we burst into the Obnoxious home, here's what was said.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: You'll never believe what happened!

LITTKE SISTER: It's a Christmas miracle!

BABY SISTER: THE BEST WAY TO SPREAD CHRISTMAS CHEER IS BY BURPING LOUD FOR ALL TO HEAR!