My Cardboard Balcony

A Peppermint For Charlie by Belinda Roddie "A peppermint for Charlie!" cried the small and sprightly man, fetching from his knapsack a red and white sweet for the four foot tall girl, as her brothers all laughed and rolled back their eyes. But Charlie hadn't asked for much this year for Christmas, and with a large smile, she took the candy. "This is just enough for me this holiday," she told them. "While you ask for toys and new video games and remote controlled cars, I have my books to read already, and I know the names of all the other children whose sad looks ought to be erased by the gifts meant for me because I think they deserve them more."

I tried to withhold my judgment of the customer as he berated my coworker about saying, "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!" I was unsuccessful in doing so. Being both off-shift and on-call at the café was more than enough to possibly excuse my behavior and avoid my getting fired. So I approached the red-faced man screaming about "political correctness" and "God's wrath," popped off the plastic lid of my coffee cup, and poured the steaming hot blackness down the front of the jerk's shirt.