Less than an hour ago, a teenager tried to ruin my afternoon. The question is, did I let her stupidity win, or did I overcome?

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Meghan worked this morning, so Harrison and I took a boys trip to Doylestown. We walked around, got coffee at Starbucks, picked up my running shoes, normal guy stuff, male bonding.

The final stop was Lovebird, a fried chicken place. I struggled to fit the stroller through the door and the patron sitting at the nearby table watched in wonder while not helping me. Once in, the order went like this:

Teenage idiot: Hi, how can I help you?

Me: Hi, I’ll take a small tossed popcorn chicken.

Teenage loser: Okay what sauces would you like?

Me: Let’s just do BBQ.

Teenage salesman: Do you want a second one? You can get it on the side.

Me: No thanks, just BBQ is fine.

Teenage sweetheart: Your baby is adorable by the way!

Me: Thanks, just please don’t fuck up my order. (exaggerated for comic effect)

I got my food and we walked back to the car. I locked Harrison into the car seat, loaded up the stroller, and sat in the front ready to nibble at my chicken. You can see where this is going.

When I opened the container, I found my popcorn chicken covered in BUFFALO. SAUCE.* I could not have been more explicit in saying BAR. BEE. QUE. SAUCE.* when placing the order. In fact, I said it TWICE.

*I genuinely did not know we could change the color of our text on this blog until right now. This is our 1,299th post on the site and I think this is the first time either of us has used colored text (to great effect I might add).

Naturally, my instant reaction was “this is okay, I like buffalo sauce too“. But as I began eating my buffalo popcorn chicken, my eyes started tearing up. All of a sudden I could feel my forehead sweating. I famously claimed in college that the bag of Nacho Cheese Doritios I was eating was too spicy. Though I’ve come a long way, this sauce was getting the best of me.

As I continued eating and continued suffering, I was starting to get MAD at this teenage girl; she was ruining a father-son afternoon that neither of us will ever forget.

I thought, “I usually let these things slide, but girl, you had ONE job. Put the order in correctly! How hard can it be!! I’m justified in my anger!!!” (I’m well aware it could have been the cook who misread BBQ and put Buffalo but I am ignoring that possibility for the sake of this post).

And then…

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Once I finished the chicken, and my tears dried, I simply couldn’t hold on to my anger any longer. I forgave the teenage girl. I did not let her ruin our afternoon. In fact she couldn’t have ruined my afternoon. She made an honest mistake.

As much as I wanted to label her incompetent and say “What if you’re going to a job interview and I’m the boss!“, I moved on. Perhaps that’s years of mindfulness at work. Perhaps it’s the innate beta in me. I don’t know. But I find life easier to navigate when a teenager like this can’t ruin an afternoon with my son. That’s my advice.