you can sing
please sing
 
At a table in a mountain town diner, a man set his jacket over the back of his chair and announced, today’s my birthday! The waitress scurried over to receive his excitement. “Oh we’ll have to sing to you then, won’t we!” Gruff, he answers with a “No no don’t embarrass an old man like that!” The waitress, quick to relieve herself of her self-assigned duty, gives a saucy  “Well, we’ll spare ya this time” and moves on.
 
As she walks away, he calls out “You can sing. Please sing.” The desperation in his voice was impossible to miss.
 
Tillie’s Diner
Anaconda, Montana
2020