Jose Padua: Revelation at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store and Restaurant on a Sunday Night

We’re waiting for the cashier
so we can pay for dinner
after eating at our local
Cracker Barrel Old Country
Store and Restaurant
when my wife looks
to our four-year old son
who’s standing in front
of a rack of camouflage
colored jelly beans and
says, “Stay here, now.”
He pauses for
a long moment,
turns to his right to look at
and perhaps catch
a whiff of a chocolate
scented teddy bear,
then looks back all
slow and serious
over to my wife and to me
and his older sister
and says “Strange things
are going on,”
which reminds me
that revolution begins
not so much with
the ability to recognize
what’s wrong but
with the confidence
to speak it.

—

Copyright 2015 Jose Padua

Photograph by Jose Padua