If a waitress accidentally spilled a glass of water on me during a meal, I imagine I'd be a little annoyed. Even if I knew it was a mistake, I might sigh with exasperation and likely let my impatience show in some way. Recently, I saw a teenager handle this situation in a remarkable way.

She was sitting with her sister and father at a sushi restaurant, and the server was placing water glasses on the table. One of the glasses was knocked over, and the water spilled on the girl's lap.

It was late on a Saturday afternoon, and the small restaurant was empty except their group and me and my daughter sitting across the way.

Of course, the waitress immediately began apologizing and tried to wipe the girl's pants. The young lady stood up, patted her self with some napkins and said: "Don't worry about it. It's water. It will dry." She went back to enjoying her lunch with her family. When the server came by later and asked how she was doing, the girl smiled and said, "It's pretty much dry now."

Varisa Tsau, 45, moved to the St. Louis area a year and a half ago from Thailand. She's been working as a waitress and speaks limited English. "I felt sorry she was so wet," Tsau told me later. She said that she appreciated that the girl was not angry. "She said sorry to me, too."

I approached the girl's table before leaving and told her that I had seen how graciously she treated the waitress and how impressed I was by her reaction. She giggled a little nervously, and thanked me.

It was the expression on her father's face that I immediately recognized. He looked very proud of his girl.

It took me back to a plane ride when my children were four and two years old. I had planned a different activity for every fifteen minutes of the two-and-a-half hour flight. The goal was to keep them quiet and in their seats, a challenge when flying solo with toddlers. I was exhausted by the time we landed. An older woman sitting behind me leaned forward and said: "Mom, you deserve a medal. I got tired just watching you."

She may as well have handed me a Nobel Prize. I was so appreciative of her words, and that kindness made an impression that has stayed with me ever since.

Beth Harpaz, an author who writes about parenting for the Associated Press, says whenever she sees parents with well-behaved children dining in a restaurant, she makes it a point to tell them: "You guys are great parents. When my kids were little we never had a peaceful meal, so I know how hard it is to do what you're doing."

"They're so pleased and so proud of their kids," she said. "I empathize deeply with the parents who are trying to make it work." And children benefit from overhearing the compliment, as well. It's positive reinforcement for everyone.

Harpaz remembers taking her two sons to Paris when they were 5 and 9 years old. Calamity ensured at every restaurant meal, from dropped silverware and spilled drinks to fights between the two. At their last meal, she devoted herself to making sure it went smoothly, refereeing any potential arguments, catching any falling objects before they hit the ground or table. "I was like a traffic cop. I wasn't even eating food, I was preventing disaster."

When it was over, the people sitting next to them commented on what wonderfully well-behaved children they had. She and her husband cracked up laughing because they knew the Herculean effort involved in that meal. "I was so happy that someone noticed," Harpaz said.

Too often, parents know the embarrassment and frustration of children misbehaving in public. Strangers can be quick to cast a judgmental eye at the mother of a child having a tantrum in a grocery store, losing it on a flight or in a restaurant. Some will chastise perfect strangers for what they perceive to be parenting failures. But on the occasions when the opposite happens, when someone unbound by friendship or familial ties notices and compliments our child's behavior, it can make a profound impact.

First, Diane Wamhoff went to Brazil to work with children infected with AIDS to try to find what she had lost. She didn't find peace or purpose there. Then, in 2002, she joined a friend's mission trip to Honduras to help build a place for homeless girls. When a nun offered to take her and a few others to a remote mountain to visit a village, she continued on the search that had propelled her from her comfortable, suburban life.

Her only son, Timmy Ellison, had died in a car accident almost a decade earlier, when he was 23. There is a deep emptiness that accompanies that sort of loss.

She understood hardship from her own childhood. The eldest of eight children, Wamhoff remembers wondering why Santa left just one small gift for her while her friends received so much more. She grew up putting cardboard in her shoes to make them last longer.

But, on the mountain near the village of Guaymitas, she confronted the most abject poverty she had ever seen in her life.

Wamhoff stood there and saw children forced to eat grass and weeds to survive. When the nun asked if they would be able to help build the kitchen that the rundown school needed to provide government-funded rice and beans, Wamhoff recalls the church saying it didn't have the money. So, she raised her hand. "I'll do it." This was a way she could keep her son alive in people's hearts. Afterward, she considered it a message from her child and her God.

"Timmy was saying, 'This is it, Mom,' and God was saying, 'This is what you've been looking for.'" She came back home to St. Charles, Mo., where her husband runs a financial planning business, and told him: "Guess what, honey. We're going to take care of a hundred kids in Honduras."

"Okay, we'll have a golf tournament," he said. The moment changed their lives. A kitchen begot a generator, which helped power a new building, which turned into a vocational school, which eventually became a high school. Their golf tournaments and fundraisers have brought in about a million dollars over the past decade. They go to deliver money and supplies and work on projects about six times a year.

Wamhoff, 65, is an unlikely benefactor in this Central American republic. More than two-thirds of the population lives in poverty. The murder rate is among the highest in the world, partly because of its pivotal spot in the drug traffic moving from South America into the United States. The country recently held its first open election since a coup overthrew the government in 2009.

The Wamhoffs recognize how much more dangerous the country has become since they started. They now hire three armed security guards to ride with them during the hourlong drive from the airport to the mountain, and have the armed guards stay at the compound with them. "It's kind of scary," she said, about the ride from the airport.

She only knows one word in Spanish, "bonita," and pronounces "tortilla" with an "l." She says knows the faces of the children in the school, although she can't remember their names.

The importance of keeping Timmy's memory alive to his mother is evident in how much is named in his honor. The initial project was called Angel Timmy's Kitchen, there is Angel Timmy Grade School and Angel Timmy's High School -- the mountain itself is now informally called Timmy's Mountain, Wamhoff said. The families there know who he is.

When she first arrived, there was one person on the mountain with a sixth-grade education, Wambuff said. Last year, more than 150 children attended the school and nutrition program. Eleven students have graduated from high school, seven of whom are going to college. One of her "kids" is in medical school, she says, as proud as if it's her own child's accomplishment.

The child she lost is as present in her life as ever. She talks to him frequently. "When I talk to Timmy I say, 'Well, I hope you're proud of your mother now.'"

Retailers who spit in the eye of families this Thanksgiving have been waging a bigger war against workers for much longer than just this holiday season.

Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Kmart, Macy's, Michael's, Kohl's, J.C. Penney, Toys R Us and many shopping malls will open as early as 6 p.m. Thursday. I'll bet many more follow suit next year as retailers try to get a jump on the competition during this critical sales period.

Some of us remember when Macy's was known for a parade on Thanksgiving rather than asking its employees to ditch their families on a national holiday to stand behind a register all night. My mother has worked in retail for more than a decade, since before Federated Department Stores bought the May Company and the Red Apple Sales of Foley's became the One Day Sales of Macy's. She has worked every Black Friday, of course, despite long hours of Sultan family gluttony and shenanigans the day before.

She said she was spared the Thanksgiving shift because many seasonal, part-time and younger workers volunteered for the overtime work.

At least on Thanksgiving, many of these workers will earn a living wage.

There are low-wage workers in other industries who have always had to work on Thanksgiving. If you fill up your car at a gas station, grab a prescription at a drug store or watch a movie at the theater, someone is at the register to take care of business.

It's easier to get upset about an assault on what has become a symbol of The Family Meal than the larger issue of what happens to families the remaining 364 days of the year.

Consider the Canton, Ohio Wal-Mart holding a food drive among its low-wage workers for their even worse-off co-workers.

"Please donate food items here so associates in need can enjoy Thanksgiving dinner," read a sign next to several bins set out for donations.

Wal-Mart's CEO, Mike Duke, makes $20.7 million a year while many of his workers rely on government subsidies -- provided by taxpayers by way of programs such as food stamps and Medicaid -- because it's nearly impossible for a family to meet its basic needs on the money from a full-time, minimum-wage job.

If this doesn't strike us as a broken model, then shame on us.

It's disingenuous to blame consumers for taking extreme measures to find a deal (after all, the stores wouldn't open if no one shopped that day, one line of justification goes) when it's harder to afford to buy goods for so many working families.

"... Corporate America as a whole has been so successful in squeezing the labor share of national income lower and lower that it's become a substantial constraint to businesses' ability to sell things to people," writes Matthew Yglesias, business and economics writer for Slate.

Shoppers willing to line up outside a big-box retailer at midnight are not to blame because they want (or need) to stay within a budget during the holidays.

Put the blame where it belongs: on our modern-day Scrooges, the top-level executives, the board members who reward themselves and their ilk with million-dollar bonuses, whose salaries are more than 300 times the average worker's. The ones who have seen their real income skyrocket while the rest of us have seen wages flatten or decline for years. And on the tight concentration of enormous wealth at the very top levels of income.

Today's Ebenezers could care less about holidays past, present or future. How many would be willing to do the work of one of their low-wage employees for one week and see how far that weekly pay stretches?

Let's remember this holiday season as the one when corporate America dropped the charade and proudly declared that profits trump family.