Cracker Barrel Philosophy

Yesterday, December 23, 2017 I was in Cracker Barrel doing what I thought I would never be doing, having lunch alone in Cracker Barrel.  There was a table near me seated with about three people.  The waitress was clearly trying to connect with the customers at that table.  There was a woman who would laugh so loud and so inappropriately that all heads would turn.  Really?  Either she was mentally ill or else she was trying too hard to have a good time.  I rather believe it was the latter reason.  Just because it is Christmas, don’t interrupt people just to show that you can laugh and have Christmas whether anyone else wants to celebrate it with you or not.  Just laugh softly, connect with your waitress, you don’t have to show her that you are the comedian of the year.  Surely, you have more intimate friends that you can do those things with; or not, there are a lot of sad people in this world that are very lonely.

That is one perspective of what I saw.  Another is, perhaps this woman was so lonely because she had had a husband that just walked out on her; or a child that had taken so much out of her because he or she had been addicted to drugs for years and used and abused her; perhaps she lived alone, totally alone, and the two people with her were long distance cousins who just happened to stop by on their way to the real people they loved and decided since they were that close, and it was Christmas they would stop by and take her to lunch.  She could have been just trying to prove that she was happy, that all was well, her bills were paid ( but they were not), someone was at home waiting for her to come back home that loved her (but there wasn’t) and she overcompensated for the emptiness and lonliness she felt on that bleary day when her distant cousins, whom she hardly remembered, came by to remind her what a loser she was and how happy they were.