Story with a moral??

[justageek]

I''m having lunch with my bf at a restaurant, when he gets a call from his mom. He''s talking on the phone, so I start looking around a bit. Lo and behold, there''s a little kid seated at the next table over who''s looking right back at me! And so I smile back,

like so, and resume eating (because it''s always awkward to be caught looking at someone you don''t know). Two or three minutes pass, boyfriend is still on the phone, I look around again, and the kid is still looking at me! I smile back again,

like so, and return my eyes to my plate. Another three or four minutes passes with my bf on the phone (pool trouble) -- how long am I supposed to just look down at my plate and eat like a starved woman???? So, I look around again, catch the same kid looking back at me, smile, and look back down at my plate. At which point, I hear the kid say to his dad, "DAD! That woman keeps staring and smiling at me!" (said in a completely accusatory, make-this-woman-stop tone). The dad replies, "Eat your food!"

to describe the emotions that went through me right then and there. Needless to say, my eyes for the rest of that dinner went only to my plate, to my BF, and NOWHERE ELSE. BF didn''t know this happened at all, but I told him soon after so we''d have something to laugh about in down moments

Anyway, the moral that I''ve come up with for this event I randomly remembered today morning, in light of my current indecision about whether I''m on the right career track:
It''s a smart thing to re-evaluate where you stand with everyone you know, including yourself, and do this regularly. This is good because they may be thinking something totally different than what you''re thinking, and life is short enough without wasting large chunks of it doing things you don''t want to do with people that don''t want to go where you want to go.

Had I remembered this, I wouldn''t have kept smiling at this fellow when he clearly had no intention of smiling back