MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at the Hidden Brain podcast. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. Today's story comes from Claire Burnside Och. When Burnside Och was in college, she waited tables at a high-end restaurant. One night, she had a group of 12, and a man at the table ordered two expensive bottles of wine. Burnside Och dreaded opening wine because she had a history of doing it wrong. When she began to open this man's bottle, she looked down, realized she had broken the cork. Half was stuck in her corkscrew, and the other half was stuck inside the bottle.
CLAIRE BURNSIDE OCH: And I glance at the man who ordered the wine, and my eyes are just saucers. I'm terrified. And he just kind of leans over and places his hands on the bottle and looks at me and says, I got it. And he took it from my hands and kind of turned his back so no one else could see and sort of leaned down and worked the cork. But at that point, the only thing you could do was to push the other half of the cork into the bottle. So now there's a half a cork floating in this beautiful bottle of wine, and I thought, there's no way he's going to drink this. What is going to happen? He's going to want it replaced. He's going to talk to my manager. It's going to come out of my check. And instead, he pours himself a glass that has little, tiny flecks of cork in it and proceeds to drink it. And he said, you're busy; we'll pour the rest. And the way he looked at me was so kind. And then he leaned over, and he said, don't worry, it happens. And he turned to his guests, and he started pouring them wine. And everything was fine.
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BURNSIDE OCH: I think of this man often because I hear him in my own voice when my daughters break something by accident or a server spills something on my clothes. It happens. I got it. It's amazing how disarming those words are and how they can completely redirect a situation from one ending to another. And if I could talk to that man again, I would say - I heard you, and you're aces. Thank you.
KELLY: Claire Burnside Och lives in Nairobi, Kenya. You can find more stories of unsung heroes and learn how to submit your own at myunsunghero.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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