My mom and I were sitting at a table in the last section of Cracker Barrel, the one with all of the old canned foods, rusty antiques, and poor lighting to make it seem like our dinner is being served to us in a creepy, dusty cellar.  When we sat down, a mom and daughter at the table beside us were sharing a piece of pie and asking for their check.  The daughter looked about my age, and both she and her mom looked very clean and preppy: blazers, ballet flats, hair with no fly-aways, and perfect lipstick (somehow, after eating).  I thought it was kind of funny, two sets of mom and daughter strangers, one set clean and tidy, the other set tired and frazzled and starving after a long day at work and school.  I probably had food on my shirt from a previous meal and two different colored socks on.  My mom could barely stand and was very irritable because, although she is aware she has extremely low blood sugar, she did not have the chance or appetite to take  a lunch break that day.

I was being weird because the pair caught my eye for some reason and heard bits and pieces of their conversation.  They were talking about things like the daughter’s college plans and the mom’s work drama: the same things my mom and I were fretting over.  Maybe we aren’t that different after all.

It was the dinner rush, and a really bad one at that, so when the mother and daughter left, their pie remained on the table the entire hour we waited for our food.  I kept looking at it.  It amused me for some reason.  The woman at the table vertically placed from us saw me looking at it, caught my eye, and said, “I’m about to clear that table myself!” I chuckled, and thought it was funny that something like a piece of pie left over from a mother and daughter could spark a conversation between two complete strangers.  I kept thinking about how strange the phenomenon was: the pair were probably already home, in their pajamas, doing homework or watching Dancing With the Stars, and they don’t even know that their picked-over piece of pie is still on their table at Cracker Barrel, sparking a conversation between two complete strangers.  Without their thought or knowledge, a little piece of them lingered after they were gone.  The pie was still sitting there when we left.

Little pieces of us linger everywhere we go.  A piece of pie someone didn’t finish at a restaurant initiated complex thought in a tired and probably slightly insane girl, sitting across from her exhausted and hungry mother.  Imagine how much your presence lingers every day, what unimaginable effect your words, actions, and subtle quirks may have.  Do everything truthfully.  Make that lingering effect count.