Have you ever met someone without a filter.  You know, the kind of person who has zero sense of what is appropriate or inappropriate to say to someone.  They don’t ever pause to think about whether something that is forming in their head should or should not make its way downstairs to their mouth.  Nope it’s like a living James Joyce stream of conciousness.  If they think it, they say it.

Have you ever met someone like that? 

Well, have I got a story for you.

Last night I was at the Chik-fil-a meeting some friends for dinner because I had a coupon for a free kids meal.  Our kids were playing happily together and us adults were talking.  On the other side of the restaurant was this lady who had come in with her daughter and she was clearly in desperate need of adult conversation.

And she was clearly crazy.

She was having a rather forced conversation with the family a couple of tables over.  Asking them questions and telling them unrelated facts about her life in an overly loud voice.

“I teach first grade!  And that’s a 60 hour a week job!  Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s 35, because it’s not!  Sure, we get the summers off.  6 weeks, 8 weeks maybe, but not me!  I still work, I might take a class or something and this summer I’m teaching English in Guatemala!  What do you do?  Is that your boy?  Whoops, I think he knocked a cup over!  Is it full?  Hey where are you from…”

And Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah

Blah

I made a mental note to avoid the crazy lady at all costs. 

I got up to carry Micah into the play area trying hard to avoid eye contact.

“Hey!”

(dammit)

“Your daughter’s been showing my daughter up!”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, she’s in there telling my daughter that she’s older than her.”

I smile politely.  “Well, that’s really the only thing she’s got going for her,” I offered with a minimal amount of eye contact.   “She’s only in the third percentile for height so, age is really all she’s got.”

“Yeah?  Well, my daughter’s in the 97th percentile and your kid’s in there asking her why she can’t count past 20.  Jeez!  I sure am glad she’s not in my class!”

Wow.

Several thoughts raced through my head, and I think I can be complimented for not saying any of them.  (this is called having a filter).  They were:

“Yes, well, I’m pretty glad she’s not in your class either.”

“Oh my Lord, what a horrible thing to say, what’s wrong with you?”

And:

“You know what you crazy ***** you’d be lucky to have my daughter in your class, because she’s brilliant and could maybe teach your ginormous medical experiment gone wrong of a daughter how to count up to her mother’s IQ without skipping over 17!”

You see, it’s called a filter.

Anyway, instead of saying any of those things, I winced at her and walked away.

A few minutes later she hollers over at Jessie who’s sitting with us.

“Hey!”

Jessie, our 20 year old friend from Mississippi looked up, probably wondering why on earth this crazy white lady was talking to him.

“Hey!  What are you doing hanging out with these people?”

Jessie, who does not always have the ability to hide the fact that he’s kind of laughing at you, smiled, but politely answered:

“Ma’am?”

“You’re too young to be here!  You need some friends!  You shouldn’t have to be hanging out with people with kids!  That’s terrible.  You need to be going out and having fun with people your own age!  You know, I’ve got a friend across the street who’s a bartender at Chilis.  He’s a little younger than you, but you should go over there and hang out with him.  I feel like I’ve got to help get you some friends!”

Now bear in mind, all of this is happening at 6:00 on a Thursday night across about 5 tables in a Chik-fil-a with a room full of other customers.  Jessie, at this point is somewhere between amused, bewildered and a little frightened.  

“I’ma right.”

“No!  You gotta hang out with some people your own age this is ridiculous!” 

Around this time her daughter emerged from the playroom, breathing hard and with cheeks that were bright red and appeared to be inflamed form the Ebola virus.

Jessie grinned over at me and said, “she’s crazy!”

Luckily, she then got distracted by a deaf family sitting on the other side of her.  Apparently her brother in law is dating someone who works at Gallaudet and she was telling them all about it.  I know this, because even when she was signing, she was shouting.

We thought we had maybe evaded the rest of the crazy for the night, when she got up and walked over to our table.

“Alright, Dad!  It’s time for you to be the hammer!  I teach first grade and I have to do this all day long.  It’s about time for you to get up and do something!  Why don’t you go tell all the kids it’s time to go!”

(deep breaths… try to not hit her.  She’s bigger than you…think of something to say that is not one of the things that you are currently thinking about saying…)

“So, where do you teach?”

“I teach in Landover?  So you live here in PG County?”

“No, we live just across the line in Anne Arundel.”

“Oh!  I bet you live in Crofton and were all upset when PG County was trying to annex it weren’t you?”

(what the hell is this woman talking about?)

“Well, we used to live in Cheverly, but then we moved to….”

“Yeah, as soon as you had kids, huh?”

To my credit, I didn’t say anything, but at this point, my face clearly said, “What the **** is wrong with you?”

“Oh, I’m just kidding!” she practically bellowed, “I live in Calvert County!  Come on, let’s hug it out!”

She put out her arm for me to hug her and I literally stared in bafflement at her for several moments, but when it became clear that she had no intention of lowering her arm, I reluctantly leaned in for the most awkward hug I have ever had.

“So, where are you from?” she said, once again directing the crazy at Jessie.

“Mississippi.”

“Why are you up here?  Why did you leave Mississippi?”

“It’s better up here,”  offered Jessie, which I thought was a nice thing to say.

“What?”

“It’s better up here!”

“Really?  How is it better up HERE?”

Jessie is all but laughing out loud right now.

“Well, I like Mississippi, but you know, there’s jobs and stuff up here and...”

“Well you’ve got to get some friends!  You can’t just be hanging around here with people with kids!”

Jessie decided to change tacts, “But my friends all got kids.”

“These aren’t your friends, you need friends your own age!”

“Nah, I mean my friends back home all got kids too.”

“He said he was from Mississippi,” I joked.

“Now that’s just a stereotype!” she shouted.

“Jessie,” I said, “ how many of the girls in your high school graduating class have babies now?”

He thought for a minute and answered, “all but about three.”

(that’s out of a graduating class of several hundred)

“Alright wise guy, where did you grow up?” 

(more deep breaths)

“Tennessee.”

“Where?”

“In Kingsport.”

“Oh my gosh!  My husbands family grew up in Kingsport!  They lived on Skyland Drive!”

At this point, a cold shiver went down my back, like Satan himself was tickling my spine.

You see, I lived on Skyland Drive in Kingsport, TN.

Kingsport is a town of almost 50,000 people.  The chance of anyone being from Kingsport, much less Skyland Drive is infinitesimally small.

My mind starts racing.  How could she have known that?  I haven’t lived there in 15 years.  I’ve lived almost a dozen different places since then. 

For the first time in my life, I’m starting to wonder if psychics exist.  Could this lady be psychic?  Do psychics usually kill people?

After a long pause, where I’m trying to read this woman’s face to tell what is going on, I finally mumble, “I lived on Skyland Dr.”

“Shut up!  Really?  Oh my gosh.  I’ve got to call my mother in law!”

Which she proceeds to do, standing in the middle of the chik-fil-a.

It turns out that the grandmother does live on Skyland, not too far from where we lived, although neither of us ever really knew the other.

“Ok” she continues, “but where are you from?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, still fairly terrified by her dark powers.

“Well, I know you didn’t just grow up in Tennessee.  I’m a linguist and I can tell you didn’t just grow up in Tennessee.”

“No,” I said, feeling a little more confident, “I was born in South Carolina and lived in South Florida and Memphis for a while.”

“But you don’t have an accent!  Where are your parents from?”

I’m finally starting to breath again.  Clearly she doesn’t know everything about me.  She’s not psychic.  She’s just nuts and happens to be married to some redneck that lived down the street from me.  And this accent thing clearly has her thrown.  It’s as if I have ruptured one of her foundational beliefs.

“Well,” I said, knowing what’s coming next, “My mom grew up in Jackson, TN and my Dad was born in Alabama.”

Take that you crazy old bat!  You think the whole world is simple?  Well prepare to have your mind blown by my lack of an outrageous hillbilly accent!  MWA HA HA HA!

“But that doesn’t make any sense!  You don’t have any accent!  Are you sure that…”

Holy crap!  She’s like the Terminator.

At this point, our girls come out of the playroom.  They are now fast friends and this woman’s 97% daughter towers over my tiny waif of a child and looks as if she might eat  her at any given moment.  The daughter then comes up to me and says:

“What’s your phone number?”

Woah Nelly!  Phone Number!  And the stalking is complete.

I stare blankly at the girl, her inflamed cheeks shining back at me as she waits for me to tell her my number.

“Oh, don’t worry, she’s not diseased” says the crazy lady gesturing at her daughter’s cheeks.  She just always wants freckles, so she tries to draw them on with a marker.”

I look closely and realize that, yes, it is just smeared red marker and not leprosy as I had previously supposed.

“What’s your number?” the non-diseased girl repeats.

I mumble something about “uh, well, uh, do you have a piece of paper,” all the while trying to decide which fake number I should write down.

It’s at this point that the Mom pulls something out of her purse and hands it to me.

“Here you go!  My phone numbers on that!  Look through it and once you pick out something you like, give me a call!”

It’s an Avon catalog.

You have got to be kidding me.

This evening is in danger of becoming one of the strangest nights of my life when I was 12, I once danced with a drunk woman at a Mexican Disco, while the Mariachi band played a salsa song about superman.  “Superman, Superman, Super, Super, Superman!”

(true story)

Luckily, it is at this point that the lady’s phone rings and she starts gabbing away at full volume to someone about how she just met a guy from Kingsport, TN and can you believe it!

I take this moment to tell my kids that it is time to go (now!)

So, we pack up.  I round up kids, throw away garbage, make sure everyone has shoes and socks and start making my way toward the door. 

“So, did you find anything you like in the catalog?” she calls out to me.

“Uh, I haven’t really looked, but I’ll be sure to ask my non-make-up wearing wife what she wants.”

“Oh there’s all kinds of stuff in there!  She could get some anti-aging cream or….”

Yeah, I’m going to suggest to my wife that she get some anti-aging cream.  Maybe while I’m at it I’ll buy her a subscription to weight watchers for her birthday and tell her to dye her hair blonde.  Good lord, does this woman want me to be killed tonight?

As we’re walking out the door, she screams at Jessie, “And you!  You should really go over to Chilis!”

We immediately get in the van and lock the doors. 

On the way home Audra asks if she can have a playdate with her new friend and I tell her we’ll discuss it later….

as in on my deathbed.

I check the mirror several times on the way home but I don’t think we’ve been followed.

We pull into the driveway and as the garage door shuts, I breathe a big sigh of relief.

Jessie starts to laugh. 

“Man, that woman was crazy.”

Or as we might say in Chik-fil-a parlance:  "two nuggets short of a kids meal."