Keyboard Warrior

A Story by Gianni

Filled with laughs, raw emotion, and shock; I wrote a response to a negative review on my parents restaurant. Without knowing, it turned into a method of expression I've never achieved in my life.

My name is Gianni Secchi. I am the owner's son here at Ferrari's Italian Villa in Grapevine. I'm asking you all for a brief few minutes to read this. I've never been able to express myself this way in my entire life. I can bet you'll laugh, maybe cry, and be shocked by the end of it. If somebody makes a statement like that... They better be able to back it up. I know I can... So here goes nothing. I just stumbled upon this review and gasped reading the comments and our inability to respond in a timely manner. My dad, Francesco Secchi, is a 70 year old Italian born native who doesn't have a cell phone because he knows the only way you need to reach him is by calling the restaurant. My mother, Jane Secchi, is from England and runs the show on the books behind the scenes all while trying to adapt to current technology. She learned how to type with all of her sons' guidance. Even though she still types with one index finger at a time, (she'd slap me for revealing that!) she is doing a fantastic job keeping up with all the extremely high demands of being a restaurant owner. They wouldn't feel good knowing they had a chance to redeem themselves and didn't. I'll say one thing. My father is a strict man of principles. He turned down an invitation to play for the youth Italian national soccer team because his father passing away. Being the oldest present son at 12 years old, he felt it was his duty to take care of the family. Come over to our place, and turn on La Rai Sports, he'll tell you stories of playing with some of the announcers years ago. After his family was settled from the loss of my Grandfather, he left his Italian farm in Perfugas, Sardegna with nothing in his pocket at the tender age of 16 to travel across the world. ... I promise you one thing. That waiter HEARD about this. When I was younger and a stubborn 18 year old, I used to work at Ferrari's Grapevine and I would get in arguments with my dad for things I believed didn't matter. I HEARD about everything. I deserved to. Things like occasionally not wiping down the chairs before every shift, not leaving the restaurant even if all your customers had paid out because I was dying to go chase girls, cleaning when I had nothing to do before the shift, getting scolded when we weren't busy for dancing around and being a goofy 18 year old. As I approach my 30s, I notice how much all of these things matter now; and he still hasn't changed. He's still that traditional foreign man I've learned to have incredible respect, with values I continue to see disappear in our everyday culture. I look up to him. If I'm half the man he is I'll die happy. He's one of a kind. He's good looking. He's a bull. Couldn't find a trace of an ego in him if you put him under a Hubble telescope. He just survived WEST NILE VIRUS! West Nile Virus at 70 years old!!! It kills healthy adults...easily. I don't even think he cared he had it. He was joking with the nurse about who gets the lobster tail if they split a surf and turf, when he hadn't slept in a week. That is no exaggeration. One of the symptoms of West Nile is Insomnia. Meanwhile, I'm walking out of the hospital having one of those internal reflections on life, thinking... Damn. I haven't been the best son I could have been. I've acted up so much there's no way I would warrant the respect my father receives. Have I disappointed him? Sometimes I feel like I'm crafted from a different planet then him. I'm SO much different then him. Am I the son he expected to raise? Tough thoughts to swallow. Is this really... it? It wasn't. Not once did I see a second of vulnerability that is ever so present in the twilight hours of a man's life. He stared Death right in-between the eyes, and laughed until he walked away with his tail right in-between his legs. Let. That. Sink. In. That's a REAL man. The first thing he did after getting back home from the hospital was dress up and go back to the restaurant the next day. Furthermore, I've never in my ENTIRE life heard him say a cuss word...Never. Not once. Not even when I was in 1st grade and I felt it was a good idea to audibly pass gas at the dinner table. I was the only one laughing as I heard the wooden chair screech on the linoleum floor to my dad standing up "HEY!". In a booming Italian accent. A volume level I shouldn't be that familiar with at that age resulting from my mischief, "GO TO YOUR ROOM"! I heard everybody's soup spoons, and jaws drop... but no cuss words. Little do they know, I heard them all laughing as I put my ear to the door in my room. I would have paid to be a fly on the wall to watch my dad walk back into the kitchen with that small grin I know so well. A grin which told my brothers, and mother it's ok to laugh because they knew they wanted to. He commanded how social interaction flowed in my household, I guess I was just a bit of a rebel. "Testaduro" Hard-head in Italian. We've both been called that a few times before partly why we argued as I grew up. It was a risk I had to take for the laugh. It's the things you're not supposed to admit or condone you think are funny that sometimes end up being the funniest. Laughing is what we need. These comments, and review bother me a bit, because I know what something like this can do online to somebodies business. That's not an accurate representation of how these two individuals treat people in general, let alone in business. I've seen the trials and tribulations my parents have gone through over the years. Money has been extremely tight. Occasionally I've seen my mom cry coming home late at night after owning that dining room with the biggest smile she could muster, greeting, laughing, and always doing her best to make sure customers experiences were pleasurable. It would hurt them to know you had a bad experience and people are commending it as well. I'm happy my dad has never touched a keyboard in his life to know how to login to Facebook, because I don't want him to change the way he is. He needs to continue to raise his eyebrows as if they are windshield wipers on full-blast. Using one-liners I may or may not have heard before. Making people smile. That's what this world needs. He's good at it. Of course he would want to know this information, and it's our poor job of not relaying the message, but understand in their situation it requires putting somebody on payroll to manage social media. Sometimes you've got to play chess, and see what the best move is to do. It's hard for them to understand social media so they've made an executive decision and haven't put much attention to it. As a business owner, whether right or wrong, those decisions have to be made by someone. They chose not to. These two incredibly selfless people have raised generations of Dallas families with Italian food in a market that doesn't support it as much as the big cities New York, Chicago, or the West coast... Which isn't easy, and they've done it without Social Media. They are simple happy people that love each other, and have been married for centuries. Too many years to count. I hope I can find love like that someday. When I asked my dad what he wanted for Christmas, typical response, "Just give me a nice glass of wine"... So of course, Christmas morning as we were unwrapping presents, (dogs unwrapped theirs first as is tradition) there he was hanging out on the couch. I walked up to him with a nice glass of Valpolicella at 8am in the morning. We all laughed. Wish I had more time to laugh like that sometimes. It takes a lot for me to express "feelings", and this is Facebook, a place I probably shouldn't be. but I'm shook up reading this realizing it took a negative review for me to write a book talking about how much I love my parents. I don't say it enough. I struggle with expressing feelings I think. My parents have taken absurd risks to get to where they are today. Risks most people don't even have a perception of. They are inspiration at it's finest. Their incomparably hard work ethic, and morals have given me the perseverance to continue pushing my company I'm starting, when I surely had my doubts. Completely putting myself out of my comfort zone to do what it takes to gain publicity, and basically failing with my goal. Failing, and failing time and time again. Certain times I felt like I'm on the brink of losing my sanity, pulling my hair out, without making a dollar in 6 months. Money doesn't motivate me, I've made quite a bit out of nothing in Real Estate, I'll be fine. I got bored, and pursued what I believe is my passion. I got to the point of scraping to live. Draining savings. Exchanging my quarter collection to make payment on my maxed out credit card, and loans people are knocking on the door for. I was, and am basically poor. (I know that's a relative term so let's say living has been adversarial.) I haven't told anybody that. Brothers. Friends. Nobody. I wouldn't dare ask for my parent's help through this out of my respect for their journey, and you can guaran-damn-tee I will answer those calls without anybody's help because of the way they showed me how to accomplish the impossible. I questioned myself whether I should continue, and thought how the HELL did my parents do what they did with nothing. I would have quit if I didn't watch my parents drag through a lawsuit for 10 years. A lawsuit that we won on all accounts at first, but lost on all accounts in appeals court on some funky business we believe. A lawsuit that had a 1% chance to reach supreme court, and it did as Secchi vs. Prudential Insurance. I would have quit if I didn't see my mom cry thinking we potentially lost everything in that lawsuit but kept going only to win. (The only way we had a chance to fight a corporate machine was because of a customer years ago they maintained a friendship with that helped out in the final hours.) I should be ashamed quitting was ever a thought. The legacy I leave behind on this planet is what I'm chasing. I hope to follow my dad's footsteps and leave an imprint. There is an Aura about that man. He's left people with a positive impression since he was a young boy. Thanks to the impact of that Aura, I didn't quit. I know people were rooting for, and against me. Now, we've accepted our first pre-orders. It means more then anything. I hope you guys give my parents another chance they work extremely hard to put out good food, and treat people right. It's a mom and pop restaurant, with surreal history from you won't believe interesting people. A quote that rings through my head from a childhood video game I used to play, although silly, resonates as I write this. Deckard Cain would tell me, "Stay awhile and listen". I encourage you to sit down and listen to a few stories from them sometimes. My dad is so humble, you may have to pull the stories out of him. He doesn't like to talk much about himself. When it happens it's a pleasure. Hollywood should write about these two peoples' lives. Their CRAZY road here filled with impossible events (Beatles, and Mc Jagger regularly asking for my dad to name a few) which I don't have enough time to type. Their devotion to treating people right through their restaurant, it's a beautiful story. This is not a chain. Margins are slim in restaurants, especially Mom and Pops places. Ferrari's doesn't have the luxury of "diversifying their portfolio" by distributing their online hiccups across many restaurants like a chain restaurant may have. We very well could have been a chain restaurant if my parents made a few ethically questionable choices, but you couldn't pay my dad to make a morally contentious decision. Testaduro in all the right places. People have tried, it didn't work. Negative reviews can seriously damage this sort of business. Mom, and pops places have to be more so on their toes then corporate restaurants because their reputation is more vulnerable; potentially closing the establishment. That's closing my family's doors as well. How would we feel as a community about a dining experience full of chains void of people like my parents who live and breath their restaurant. That's not to say negative reviews aren't warranted for a Mom and Pop establishment, they are. I'm just saying choose wisely. They may be more impactful then you really know. It's easy to find things wrong with something and talk about it. We as an organization didn't respond and do what we should have Billy Pender because we sometimes neglect the importance of our online presence. We are at fault. Certainly. If we don't stumble, we don't learn in life. Without failure, there is no glory in triumph. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. My dad is doing better though, he's now got his number taped onto the back of his flip phone, so we're getting somewhere. I will be sure to show my parents everyones disapproval, as they would want to know being business owners. I truly hope you guys give my parents another chance. I love them, and their lifetime devotion to Ferrari's and their clientele. I love them for who they are, and what they've done. Now where is that nice glass of wine?

© 2016 Gianni

Author's Note

I'm not the best writer, but I expressed myself more then I ever have here. I'm not perfect with grammar so please excuse my poor mistakes. What do you think of the dialogue?