The events of this story took place about 25 years ago in a small breakfast diner just south of Orlando, Florida.
I was only seven years old at the time, yet the memories from this experience are as vivid as the ones I can recall from yesterday. We were on our first family holiday at Disneyworld.
Our daily ritual was to get in a substantial breakfast before exploring the parks — my mother never let us have junk food back home, so every day felt like Christmas morning. A welcome opportunity for my older brother and me to avariciously stuff ourselves with pancakes, bacon, and maple syrup.
As we were standing in line waiting to be seated, directly in front of us stood an elderly couple — a well-dressed man and woman in their seventies, short in stature and smelling like expensive cologne. The man had the whitest hair I’d ever seen — it sat on top of his head like a slick dollop of freshly whipped cream.
As he heard my father say something with his hearty Nigerian accent, he turned, eyed us markedly up and down, and turned back around silently.