I was trolling Facebook when I should have been cleaning.

The Mommy & Me Contests had begun. 

"Hit Like to Enter to Win A Free Mommy & Me Mini Session!"

"Vote for a Deserving Mom!"

Marketing, I knew I should be putting up the same posts to generate buzz about my Mommy & Me Sessions.

How do you pick a deserving Mom? 

I didn't need a contest I knew exactly who I wanted to bring into the studio.

Back in the day I was a single mom working as a waitress. I had been a waitress for 7 years in this particular restaurant. 

Once or twice a month these older business men would come in and always order the same thing....and send it back.

It was before dinner rush so there were only a few tables in the place. I walked over to check on them knowing what was about to come.

"Snow....(after 7 years they still could not get that my name was Tree) these kabobs are dry we need new ones."

I picked up the plates and brought them back to the cook's line to the restaurant owner and told him they needed to be remade.

I went back to the waitress station and a minute later the Owner walks over obviously mad. That's when he started yelling at me. Not quietly. In my face yelling at me with some language I would not want my customers to hear. 

I was a little shocked. This was not my fault. I was glad the place wasn't packed. I was not sure what I was going to say to my tables when I approached them next. Worst of all I just stood there and let it happen. I would never in a million years let anyone talk to my daughter like this so why was I letting it happen?

Mid rant my hostess, a young girl who I had worked with many years, stops him.

"What are you doing! Why are you yelling at her like that? It's not her fault. What's wrong with you?"

At that moment the owner turned his wrath onto her.

She took it for exactly ten seconds. Said a few sentences I can not repeat on a family blog. The Owner fired her right then.

I watched her walk out to the parking lot and drive away. I quietly took off my apron and left as well.

I could not let someone get fired over me and I could not stay.

I can tell you that in my decades on this planet I have never seen anyone stand up for someone else. Never. Only in movies. 

But she did. I was not family. The other employees did as I did and just let it happen even though it was not right.

Not her. She stood up for me. It taught me a valuable lesson. One that I hopefully have instilled in my own daughter. 

Every once in awhile I would see her pop up online. Three kids of her own now and happily married. Her oldest child a girl.

I invited her up to the studio not letting her know why I wanted her there. I wanted to thank her after all these years. 

It was wonderful to see her again. Her kids had me in stitches! Fun, creative and so interactive with each other. I could tell she had taught the same lesson to her own daughter. She was quiet in that my mind is thinking a million miles an hour way. So smart with such an imagination. I can't wait to see what she does in the world.

Well it is decades late but saying thank you is better late then never right?