I was washing dishes at the Taco Bell in the Silver City Galleria when Ted Williams died in 2002. I liked washing the dishes. Usually, I was asked to work the register, because I was one of the only native English speakers in the place. So every time I got bumped back to the dish sink I felt like I was coming off stage. I could breathe back there.
We washed the dishes and we talked about soccer and the Red Sox. I didn’t know anything about soccer back then, but it was a World Cup summer and I worked with two Brazilian brothers who followed every minute of the tournament.