Diner Girl

This idea has been floating around in my head for a while.

Have you ever watched the movie, A Cinderella Story?

It is a comedy/romance film starring Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray, who is by the way utterly handsome. Released back in 2004, I grew up watching this movie. I always was in love with the idea of love-especially when I was younger. I remember watching it with my mom as a child.

Samantha Montgomery or "Sam", has a rough childhood with her father dying in an earthquake and a new stepmother with two awful daughters. But on the bright side, Sam has an awesome best friend named Carter and an e-mail relationship with a guy named Nomad. One day, Sam gets an e-mail from her Nomad saying that he wants to meet her in the middle of the dance floor at their high school Halloween dance. She accepts the invitation and glides into the room wearing the best outfit ever. Her Nomad takes her outside where they share a romantic dance together and Sam realizes that her e-mail friend is the most popular guy in school, Austin Ames. She runs back to her stepmother's diner before she knows she went to the dance and drops her phone on the way. Austin finds it and starts a search for his Cinderella.

Synopsis taken from IMDB

It is honestly such a sweet film about two high-school kids falling in love despite what their parents or friends want them to do. They both had dreams and aspirations that would take them farther than their hometown ever could.

There is this one line where one of the "cool" kids yells at Hilary Duff from the parking lot and says, "Hey Diner Girl, can I get a breakfast burrito to go?" and I have got to say I have never related to a line more in my life.

I grew up waitressing in a local restaurant. Where other kids spent their high school days hanging out with their friends, I spent my evenings waitressing for my family's business. I LOVED that place so much more than words can even express. I grew up there.

I still remember my first time waitressing. I was eight-years old and I was stuck at my mom's job just hanging out. One of the waitresses let me help her serve coffee to a couple tables and I earned a $2 tip for helping out. I never forgot that.

My first manager was a hard-ass. I was fourteen years old and I was so excited about ending my shift for the day with my hard-earned cash in hand that I forgot to explain to the next server on shift what was going on with one of my tables that I got yelled at for it. I cried pretty hard over the whole thing but hey what can I say, I was a kid.

When I say I lived there, I genuinely mean that. I spent over ten years of my life waitressing. I trained MANY of the staff members, created menu designs and advertisements. I quickly became great at managing Facebook and Canva-hence why I created my own Facebook page for my work which you can check out here.

I fell in love with a dishwasher when I was seventeen years old. He was kind of cute and we had grown up together. Easily made the worst mistake of my life by moving out with him a few months later. That mistake defined me for the rest of my life. After that break-up, I had lost a lot of good people in my life but I still had work. I always had work to fall back on.

But now, here I am at age twenty-five, about to have my third baby and off work again. I miss the place but I sometimes feel like I'll always be defined as Diner Girl in my hometown. I have a desire to be something more. I want to go to school again. I want to build a future that exists outside of my hometown, I am just scared of taking that leap. I don't want to be Diner Girl anymore.

I just don't want that to be my life anymore. I have been searching for my own identity my whole life because of the way my family business defined it for me. I never want that pressure to be put on my own children. I want them to grow up and make their own choices with where they work and who they love. Hell my own son doesn't want to work anywhere but at "Mommy's Bar" and I don't even want that for him. I want him to do whatever his little heart desires to do with his life.

Anyways, I guess where I am getting with this is that A Cinderella Story is a fantastic movie that changed my whole life. And I cannot wait for this next chapter in my life so I can "find my own bliss" and become something more than who people in my hometown perceive me as. Because I am more than just a waitress.

Thanks for reading my late night thoughts. I hope you enjoyed this post. And let me know what you think of the movie!

Chloe Rose Violet 🌹