Worrying About Complete Strangers …

Worrying About Complete Strangers …

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

 

We were in KFC sitting at a table where we could watch the tv mounted on the wall.

I noticed a woman come in, she set her 2 backpacks down on the floor.  She put her cup on the table. I heard her talking … I thought she probably had a bluetooth on her ear.  I talk on mine whenever I’m having a conversation on my cellphone … people don’t see the bluetooth when I do.  They think I’m talking to myself.

The woman was moving around, walking close by us.  She was into her conversation.  I told Skip I hoped she wasn’t walking in the heat.  I worried she was hungry.  She was a strange looking woman.  I felt she was homeless … walking.

Her hair was cut like a man’s hair, she could have been a man … I saw her boobs.  When I looked in her face, I saw ‘hell in her eyes’.  She had on an old sleeveless tee shirt, and baggy shorts.  There were scars on the back of her head like … she’d had brain surgery, or something.

Skip told me it was best not to say anything to her … sometimes, when you wish to do good … it could turn out ‘bad’.  I’m glad I listened to him … because he was right.

A few minutes later, a man come in to eat from the buffet.  He paid for his food, went to get what he wanted, then he sat down on the other side of us.  He began talking … to himself.

We have always seen this man walking, eating in the fast food places in town.  He was a local man and he was always talking to himself.  We would never let anyone bother him if we saw someone trying to … and if someone laughed at him … I would get up and go ask them not to.  He can’t help it.

I don’t know anything about him … but, through the years I felt protective … we are like that when people, children look as if they need an extra eye out for them.  We don’t tell them … we just listen, and know if all’s all right.  If we all did that … maybe people would be safer.

It was the same with the woman … she was talking to herself.  She sat on one side of us talking … he sat on the other side talking … both talking to themselves.

The woman was getting agitated.  I was glad I listened to Skip.  In a few minutes I saw her began talking loud, angry to another woman who had brought her food to a table near her.  She told that woman she needed to go on a diet.

The woman who just put her food on the table, didn’t like that.  She also, didn’t know there was something wrong with the woman who told her she needed to go on a diet.  She told the woman that her man liked big women … she began saying things back.

I saw what Skip meant … the woman who talked to herself was getting angrier.  I’m so glad I didn’t say anything to her …. even if I would have been trying to be … good.

The big woman got up to get napkins … I quietly told her that we’d been there for a while.  I told her that it might be best not to say things back to the talking woman … that she wasn’t right.  She understood then … we left so, I hope she didn’t say anything else.

This was the day we went to KFC to eat chicken, and everyone was talking to themselves.

I worried for those 2 people.  I worked around patients like them.  You don’t usually see them alone out just anywhere … something could happen to them.  I worried they had no one to care for them, love them.

Have you worried for complete strangers when encountering them out anywhere?