You’ll forget the menu. You won’t forget the cafeteria worker who called you “baby” on your worst day.

Kindness from somebody with no stake in you lands differently. On a day when everything was wrong, a person behind a counter who did not know what was happening said something warm, and that is the part that stayed. It was proof that the room was not entirely against you.

Say a real good morning to the people who hand you things this week, because any one of them might be having that day. Use a name if you have it. You will not know which small warmth lands, and that is fine; the cost of offering is a sentence.