Today, I got my first proposal for marriage. This is how it went.

I was working when the hostess, a girl called LuLu, (yeah, the second L is capitalized, for some weird reason) sat down a family at one of my tables. Seemed normal, right? Well, it wasn't. Apparently, the little boy (I guessed his age around seven or eight) didn't want a children's menu and told me very politely that he ate off the adult menu.

"Of course. I'll get you one." I hurried off to get him the other menu.

I told LuLu when I was up front and she laughed. "That little like boy? He's like the size of like my five year old sister."

I ignored her and brought the boy his menu. "Thank you." He said.

"Just trying to be of service." I said, wrote my name on the paper tablecloth. "I'm Nathalie and I'll be your waitress tonight. What can I get you to drink?"

"You wrote Ethan." The boy pointed out.

"Right. Oops." I scribbled it out and wrote my real name. "Ethan is my pen name."

"You write?"

"Yeah."

"Novels?"

"Mostly plays and short stories. Nothing that serious." I lied. Well, sometimes I wrote, but those times had become few and far between since I started at Lakewood.

"So does Simon ." The mother nodded in the direction of the boy.

"Mother. Don't embarrass me further."

"But, honey, your play won you that scholarship. You should be proud of yourself."

"Mother. I would greatly appreciate it if you didn't mention that to me ever again."

"Why?"

"I hate it. The sappy romance, the weak verbs, the total lack of conviction in the characters. It's pathetic."

"The judges didn't think so."

Eventually, they ordered. I don't usually write about the people I'm waiting on, but the family was very nice. There were two girls who were twins but looked nothing alike, and, according to the snippets of conversation I heard, the mother had written an opera. Indeed, the little boy, Simon, did eat a lot, and I wondered if he was going through a growth spurt or something.

As I brought their food, one of the twins was talking about her flute recital and the other was telling her father about the her English class, which, like ours, had had a thrilling sword fight in the first scene of Romeo and Juliet. They're English teacher sounded almost as cool as mine had been.

During desert, I tripped, sending Simon's sunday flying into his shirt. I held back a curse, not wanting to soil his young and innocent ears, and apologized so profusely that Adam yelled across the restaurant for me to get back to work or I'd be fired. Then he told me to take him to the bathroom and help clean him off.

And I did. For a long while, we stood poised in front of the doors to both the men's and the woman's restroom. What to do...what to do...Sure, I'd been in the boy's bathroom so many times I couldn't count, but Simon knew I was a girl. And he was a little kid, so would it be okay for him to go into the ladies side?

"This way." Simon said, pushing open the door to the men's room.

I cleaned him off the best I could with paper towels, hoping that his mother's washer worked wonders. All that chocolate and strawberry sauce....

"Nathalie, do you have a boyfriend?" Simon asked.

"No." I replied, scrubbing a tough looking chocolate stain.

"Will you marry me then?"

All I could think to say was "Why me?"

"Frankly, I don't know why." (God, this little kid spoke like a grown-up) "But your unnatural blend of masculine and feminine qualities makes you probably the most interesting person I have ever encountered. You refuse to act ditsy and gossip, and you have no qualms about going into the men's restroom, but you are most definitely a girl. How might I go about making you fall in love with me?"

"Come back when you grow up a little." I told him, not sure what else to say to that. Had he complemented or insulted me?

We left the bathroom and Simon returned to his table. I begged one of my coworkers to take their check, but he wouldn't budge from his own work. So I finished my work with them and, when they were just about to go, I saw Simon talking with Adam. Nothing good would come from that.

They left. I hurried over to Adam and asked what Simon had been talking to him about. "You know Simon?" Adam asked. "I guess you must. Scholarship student have got to stick together."

"You don't mean that--"

"That Simon is going to Lakewood next year. He'll be a sophomore, just like you."