Mr. W and I went to The Melting Pot for a fondue dinner on Sunday night.  As soon as we sat in our booth, we were able to very clearly hear the conversation at another booth diagonally across the aisle from us.  I soon realized this is because an 80+ year old man was having dinner with an early 20s woman, and the man was hard of hearing.  He’d ask her to repeat everything she said, and she spoke loudly and clearly to begin with.  I thought it was very sweet; she never lost patience with him, helped him with his fondue, introduced the various sauces to him, told him about some class she’s taking where she was hoping she could make up some hours for.  It looked like a busy college student took out some time to hang out with her grandfather for dinner.

After appetizers, the girl observed, “You look down today, Bob.  Are you still mad about lunch?  What did you have that was so bad, anyway?”  He replied that lunch was bad, but that wasn’t why he was upset.  He admitted that he was, indeed, upset, but it was because of HER.  She sounded surprised when she said, “Me?  What did I do?”

“You made it clear today that –”  I didn’t hear the rest, either because someone said something (possibly Mr. W, possibly the waitress) or because his voice faded off as he turned his head.  I did hear her response.

“That’s not fair, Bob.  Now I’M upset.”  She sounded indignant.

“Why are YOU upset?” he asked, almost incredulously chuckling.

“Well, because!  You make me think that that’s all a man wants.”  There was some talk that sounded like he wanted to drop it, regretting bringing it up, but she insisted she wanted to talk about it.  She finally agreed to let it go, but then made another comment about it.

“I don’t understand you, and you don’t understand me,” he said calmly but loudly, just because he has no idea how loud he is.  She did, though, as she said something discreetly to him that I couldn’t hear.  He couldn’t hear, either.  “What?  I can’t hear you.  You’re gonna have to speak up.”

She paused, then said more audibly, “Never mind, let’s talk about this later.  Let’s talk about it when we’re back in the car, so you can actually hear me better.”  He agreed, and she went back to helping him cut meat, spear raw food on the fondue picks, and putting them in the pot for him.  She asked him if he’d like some seasoning on his food.

He said suddenly, putting both palms down firmly on the table in front of him, “All I know is, you are the absolute most beautiful thing I had ever –” and his voice faded off again out of my hearing.

She handled it by chuckling and saying, “Now we know who’s blind.”

“WHAT?”

“I said, ‘NOW WE KNOW WHO’S BLIND.‘  Haha.”

The rest of the dinner was pretty peaceful between them, talking mostly of the delicious sauces, food, and her nursing assignment at the hospital for class.  When they were ready to leave, she paid the check (he griped about how much tip she gave and she had to explain that this is 2009, servers make next to nothing and depend on tips to survive, and she ALWAYS tips 20%), handed him his cane, came around his side of the booth, helped him up, let him lean heavily on her shoulder as she helped him walk slowly out of the restaurant.