Woman Leaves Complaint 23 Years After the Fact

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Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, a woman named Madeline went to eat dinner at Cracker Barrel. It was date night with her military husband and they were going to see a movie afterwards. She wanted to see “Sleepless in Seattle,” but he really had his heart set on “Jurassic Park.” As they drove to the restaurant, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” played on the car radio for the tenth time that day.

“I love this song so much,” said Madeline as she turned the volume up. “Whitney is amazing. Maybe we should go see ‘The Bodyguard’ at the dollar theater.”

“You’ve seen it three times already,” said her husband. “Just rent it at Blockbuster. And Dolly Parton sang this song with way more emotion anyway.”

It was just one more thing they didn’t agree on. Their marriage was getting shakier each day, more shaky than Katherine Hepburn’s head at an awards show. They pulled into Cracker Barrel and her husband got out of the car to go sit in a rocking chair on the porch while Madeline stayed in the car to hear Whitney finish the song. Once they got inside, things only got worse. First, their favorite table was occupied, then the iced tea wasn’t sweet enough and to cap it all off, her husband kept winning at the little game on the table where you have to move the golf tees around that wooden triangle. But the worst part of the meal was when the waitress ignored Madeline.

Hubby announced what he would be having (fried chicken livers with double mashed potatoes) but the waitress didn’t ask what Madeline wanted. Madeline just sat there waiting for her to specifically ask her what she wanted, so Madeline, being the the smart type, said out loud what she wanted. For some reason, the waitress didn’t write down the order until Hubby repeated it.

“That was weird,” said Madeline as the waitress walked away. “It’s like she didn’t want to pay any attention to me. I bet it’s because I’m Mexican, right? Do you think that’s why she was ignoring me? I mean, I’m sitting right here talking to her and it’s like I’m invisible. I think she’s a racist. That’s totally it. It can’t be because she didn’t hear me or any other logical explanation like that. It simply must mean she is a racist. Ay dios mio! Do you think that’s it, dear? Hello? I’m talking to you!”

Her husband looked up from the game he was playing. “What did you say?”

After dinner, Madeline was fuming. She sat through “Free Willy” (all the other movies were sold out) but didn’t enjoy it because she couldn’t stop thinking about how she was treated at Cracker Barrel. On the drive home, “I Will Always Love You” played again and even that did not lift her spirits.

Fast forward 23 years. Madeline is now divorced and lives alone. She often sits in her living room playing Whitney Houston’s greatest hits on her CD player and wonders where her life went off track. She traces it back to that one night at Cracker Barrel where things went so horribly wrong. Frustrated with her life and wanting to share her pain with others, she finally decides to do something about it! She goes to her computer, finds Cracker Barrel on Facebook and writes a complaint about something that happened twenty-three fucking years ago.

Twenty. Three. Fucking. Years. Ago.

“I feel so much better. I have really needed to get that off my chest,” she sighs. “Maybe they’ll send me a coupon for a free biscuit or something.”

She pops her VHS tape of “The Bodyguard,” the one she bought for a dollar when her local Blockbuster went out of business twenty years earlier, into her VCR and begins to watch it for the 1000th time. Two minutes in, it abruptly stops, the tape being worn thin after so may plays. She removes the cassette from the ancient machine and the tape stretches out, some of it stuck inside the VCR. It is ruined.

“Noooooo!!!” she screams! “Whitney!!! I will always love you!”

She knows what she has to do. She goes right back to Facebook to look up Blockbuster so she can leave them a bad review, because everyone knows that a twenty-year-old complaint is the most legitimate complaint of all.

Poor, poor Madeline. Living in the past as usual. Don’t go chasing waterfalls, Madeline. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to…

Note: this is a completely fictionalized account of the whole situation. Obviously…

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