I was first introduced to the "Universal Waitress" in 1986...it was my 35th birthday...(go ahead...do the math)...I was attending a personal development seminar called The Sage Experience...one of the many skits involved a role-playing setup between a young man and the Universal Waitress...the young man begins by wondering aloud what his life is going to be like...and the waitress appears as if summoned...dressed in a sparkly cocktail number replete with red ostrich feather boa...to take his order... for his life...for what he wants to create...for how he wants it to be...
He is thrilled by the idea that he can order what he wants...and he has a long list...a beautiful wife...a good-paying job...a home on a hill with lots of land...children...and more...
Item by item, the Universal Waitress goes about confirming his order...stopping to note some of the more challenging qualities about each of the things on his list...the idea that a beautiful wife may leave you for someone else...a good-paying job require hard work and doing things you may not like...land requires a lot of care, and the more you have the more there is that must be mowed and weeded and watered...children are a great responsibility and are expensive, especially if you want to send all of them to college...
As the waitress mentions each concern, the young man considers the possibilities...mulls them over one by one...eventually tells the waitress to remove each successive item from his order...until finally he is done, and there is nothing left of the things he had so enthusiastically said he really wanted...
Shortly after seeing this skit, a friend who had also participated in the seminar called me...it was around 4 PM on a Friday...she asked for my help...she said she wanted to get a special gift for her boyfriend for his birthday...a samurai sword...
She didn't want just any sword...she had a long list of requirements...a male sword...a decorative hilt with a dragon if possible...a curved blade that had never been used to kill anything...a real sword and not the generic versions used in martial arts...and she had no idea where to start to find one...and she had $125 budget...
I thought it might be doable...until she added that we had three hours to find it...before 7 PM when she would be meeting him...even though most pawn shops closed at 5 PM...
I almost talked myself out of trying...we were at the old Lanai shopping center in what was then South Sacramento...we had gone to the martial arts place there...no luck...and then I remembered the Universal Waitress...
I saw a public phone booth...opened the phone book to the pawn shop listings...asked my friend to close her eyes and feel for the right spot to place her finger...the spot where the shop was located...the one where we would find the sword...
We repeated the list of all her requirements...she felt each listing on each page...then she closed her eyes, turned a page and chose a spot...a shop in Rio LInda?!...
We called first...it was after 5 PM and the ad said the shop would be closed...a man answered...I told him what we were seeking, that it had to be a very special sword...I became excited when he said "wait a minute...I had something like that, but I'm not sure it's still here"...
When the man came back on the phone, he described the sword...including the unsharpened blade emblazoned with a dragon on its full length...and in that moment I finally understood: the Universe conspires to achieve my desires whenever I command my full intention and allow it...
Such a gift...
You never know when the Universal Waitress may appear or in what form...it could be Rose filling your gas tank at the Fred Meyer in Salem, Oregon...