This was an assignment for a narrative script in my documentary class where I grossly misinterpreted the objective. I eventually re-wrote it to accomodate the theme the teacher wanted, but I think the original story warrants equal attention:

It was the peak of winter and I was dining with my mother and her friends.
It was a particularly busy night and waiters raced by us with blurs of color. Their heated faces steamed with the release of stress. My mother and her friends were not as observant and became all the more vocal with the growing inconveniences. To add to her displeasure, my mother’s French Onion soup was missing a key ingredient: the cheese coating. My mother pointed the error out to the young lady, but the waitress rolled her eyes. The waitress said, with hands on hips, that the soup didn’t come with cheese. Mother was unconvinced by her answer and asked for the manager. Once the manager arrived, he apologized, but even though he canceled our check, the women continued to vent.
Miss Marnie, the oldest lady at our table, concluded that the waitress’s attitude was due to her contempt for serving black people. Miss Marnie was 72 years old, and had been through discrimination and outright racial hate, but I could kept my opinions from my elder for the night. What I saw in that waitress’ face did not reflect racial hostility. I recognized the exhaustion well: the mixed orders, the overlapping voices, the chewing out from the supervisor. No longer on the other side, I dine amongst the stressors that drove me from food service forever. That waitress may have been rude, but she lasted longer and endured more than I had during my first and only week in her place, and for that, she had my respect, and my tip.

I would call myself a beginning cartonist, but I'm not. I've been drawing since elementary school. I began cartooning seriously in high school. Since then I've had a composite 7 year contributing regularly to two college newspapers. What makes one an established cartoonist nowadays? A national syndicate? mainstream recognition? ComicCon Recognition? I don't really know, but does that make me any less of a cartoonist than those who've been noticed? I'll let you decide.....