True Stories I Want To Tell You

Many years ago, approximately 375 yards from the exact spot where I'm sitting at, a man yelled at his wife in a crowded restaurant.  What he yelled would be remembered by me and mine to this very day.  Apparently this man had some issues.  Let me tell you the story as I remember it.  (It's at this point that a cloud of rolling smoke pours in and covers the floor.  The room gets very quiet as you, the reader, lean in a little closer for a tale that can only be told in dim light.  If you need me to I can wait a couple of minutes for you to turn your lights off ....)  Anyway, my family was sitting in a booth in a local restaurant when another family proceeded to sit in a booth very near to our own.  I had just ordered the sunshine special, (It was a Saturday, around 10 in the morning, I wanted brunch.  I didn't really want lunch yet and it seemed too late for breakfast so brunch seemed like the clear choice to me.) and I can't really remember what anybody else ordered but I do remember drinking a cup of coffee as well.  I usually finish half a cup by the time my food gets to the table which seems odd that no matter how much food I order, a half cup of coffee is usually what I can finish by the time the food gets there.  But I digress ... Anyway, the family was sitting there and joking around.  That's when we heard the father from the other booth raise his voice.  To this day I'll never really understand his issues or what was going on with them before they came in the restaurant.  I'll never know if the man and his wife were fighting for the past week or if this was just normal behavior.  But you have to remember this - my family was just sitting there goofing around and talking and we hear this other family, mostly the father, start yelling.  What he yelled was pretty memorable.  If you asked the four of us to recall exactly what he said you would probably get four different answers. If you asked the four of us what time of day it was you would probably get four different answers.   And if you asked each of us what we ordered we probably couldn't remember exactly what we ordered.  But we all remember him shouting.  And we remember how scared the kid got.  And I would imagine there might have been some embarrassment from the wife or the children because of what the father yelled.  But to this day, if the line he said was repeated to any of the four of us sitting so close to their table you would hear us snicker about it.  Because sometimes it's in the moment that makes a moment so special and memorable.  I just remember how freakin' funny it was to us.  And the peace that we felt that day, as we did something so ordinary as sit and share a meal at a family restaurant, seemed so stark in difference to what the booth close to us was experiencing.  You may not find what he said to be that funny.  It's one of those times when "You just had to be there".  So, your curiosity is peaked, isn't it?  You want to know what a man could yell in a restaurant that would be remembered years later.  It's a phrase I repeat every so often just to get a smile from someone in my family because it seemed so special at the time.  Like I said, you may not find any humor in it but just remember that the man, the father of that family, yelled it in a quiet restaurant.  Also, I believe it had to do with his son's glass of tea.  What he yelled was this - "Don't give him any sugar!!  It'll make him hyper!!"  So ends the tale of a non-hyper son who almost got a lethal dose of a teaspoon of sugar and the father who would do anything to prevent it.  My name is Rueuhy and I approve this blog.