My youngest son wants to be rich. ‘Are you coming here a little too short?’, I regularly sneer, and then he smiles amiably: no. But by ‘rich’ he means: really rich. Rich enough to buy a top footballer. (I could already see that football player at our table. While passing the potatoes he would probably complain in a hoarse voice about ‘tipsy hands’ or ‘you give yourself for the full 200 percent and then you see that dream collapse’, terrible, and then I certainly had to make a quick nap every day to comfort him.)
In view of that wealth, my son enrolled in economics after graduating from high school. Well. ‘I don’t like it at all,’ he said disappointedly after the first day of lecture. And after the second day: ‘No, this is really not for me. I’m taking a gap year anyway.’ Well, we were able to get quite a bit of tuition back, and he’s 18, so what are you going to do about it?
The ‘gap year’ turned out to be mainly at night, with breakfast at 4 in the afternoon and: ‘Mama, will you make me a triple bouncer, you can do that so well, and… what? No, I can’t unload the dishes now, they’re waiting for me outside. I’ll send you a little bit more for yesterday’s fries. Bye, Mom!’
After a few weeks, when all I could do was hiss and hiss in annoyance at that hungover lanky in underpants, he suddenly said, “I’ve got a job. As a waiter in a diner.’ Laughter loudly. Waiter, him? The laziest person on earth? ‘Then pour me a drink first,’ I said. But he was already gone.
“How was it?” I asked the next day. “Pretty nice,” he replied. ‘I’m going again tonight. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow too.’ See how long he can keep that up, I thought, shaking my head. But he has lived in that cafe ever since. He eats there too. He might even sleep there.
Last week I sat down in that cafe. There my son walked around, balancing three full plates virtuoso on his arm. Relaxed, he then noted the order of a group of fifteen Americans. ‘May I recommend the Pomerol with your duck breast?’ He hadn’t smiled that gracefully at me in at least 15 years. “He gets the biggest tips,” a colleague declared in awe.
So I don’t see him that often anymore. But rich that he will be! Rich. As long as he doesn’t buy a football player, because vlaflip repulses me.