The Cracker Barrel Incident

It was a late Sunday morning in the fall of last year when my wife suggested that we visit our local Cracker Barrel for a lowkey brunch with the kids. So, we gathered the flock and spent the requisite amount of time browsing through the giftshop waiting for our name to be called. If you have never had the experience of a Cracker Barrel giftshop, just imagine a place that sells Pink Floyd vinyl, rooster crockery and cold-pressed soap in equal measure.

Everything began as you would expect, the kids fought over the single wooden-peg game allocated to our table. A franchise staple, the object of the triangle peg game is to take the golf tees and jump them over each other to reduce the remaining number to one. If any of them managed to reduce the number of pegs to three or less there were immediate accusations of cheating and malfeasance by their siblings. Eventually, their attention turned to the menus so that everyone could pretend to contemplate their choices while eventually ordering the exact same thing we knew they would.

As is our custom, as soon as the server left my children began complaining about what they perceived to be an inordinate amount of time to cook pancakes. I informed them that it has been only about 42 seconds and it is unlikely that our server has had enough time to convey our entire order to the cook unless the two of them have worked out a series of clicks and hand signals to communicate.

The food arrived in a reasonable amount of time and everyone began tucking into an artery-hardening array of eggs and gravy. Toward the end of the meal, I noticed that my wife was staring at our first-grader with mild concern. I glanced over and satisfied myself that he was not choking, but he certainly did not seem to be enjoying his folksy breakfast experience as much as the rest of us.

Apparently, my son had managed to lodge his elbow between the slats of his wooden chair. Scoffing at my wife and son’s growing alarm, I pivoted and verbally instructed him to wiggle it a little bit whilst I continued stuffing my face with French toast.  My son, looking at me with disappointment for what would not be the first or last time in his life, told me that he had already tried that.

Exasperated, I got up out of my chair and walked over behind his. In all fairness, his folded arm was firmly wedged in the widest part of the chair spindle. Upon further investigation, it appeared that his wind-breaker (which had been draped across the back of the chair) had reduced the friction against his skin allowing his extremity to protrude much farther than it normally would have.

He had already extracted the wind-breaker in an unsuccessful attempt to free himself and was now growing desperate. Still chewing my food, I leaned down and attempted to force apart the slats as he pulled his arm toward his body. It was clear that either my muscles were far more atrophied than I had feared or the chair was far better built than I suspected. Either way, it was clear that my tendons had less structural integrity than their furniture.

My feeble efforts were noticed by a rather muscular server who caught on to the situation much faster than I had. Breathing a sigh of relief that this was now in the hands of a four-star Cracker Barrel veteran who looked like he was putting up three hundy at the gym, I took a step back and watched (with some satisfaction) as he was unable to make any more progress than I had.

He and I regrouped momentarily and decided that the best course of action would be for us each to sit on the floor, place our feet on the bottom rung of the chair and then pull-on opposite sides of the same slat. As you can imagine, seeing Swole McApron and myself sitting on the floor playing tug-o-war with a child was started to draw the interest of the other patrons who had now stopped eating. Within a few moments of our latest futile attempt to end the standoff, the manager had appeared to ascertain why one of his servers was on the floor attempting to demolish company property instead of slinging gravy.

The three of us then attempted – again in vain – to create enough space for my son to free his arm. At this point, all restaurant business had ceased and even the hostess had moved closer to bear witness to my son’s plight. As is often the case in any public crisis, people began offering unsolicited advice “try lotion!” “wiggle his arm more!” “raise children with better spatial-awareness!”

The manager began lamenting that they had recently changed chair manufacturers due the sub-par quality of past items and how easily they broke. I responded that it would appear the newest model had been constructed by the Amish on a direct commission from our Lord and Savior. The manager was very kind and I verbalized my desire to avoid any damage to the chair. I then offered to pay if it had to be dismantled (an offer which he politely declined). I assured him that we would do our best not to bring any harm to the chair forged in the heart of a dying star.

During all of this, my son had remained stoic but was clearly concerned the longer the ordeal went on. My wife was comforting him amid the sideline coaching and my other children continued eating their meal as if this sort of predicament was a common occurrence anytime our family was served an entrée. Had the jaws of life been involved, my oldest would have simply tapped the nearest firefighter and requested they pass the syrup. 

Child with arm stuck in chair at Cracker Barrel - A.I. (oil on canvas)

It was around this time that a gentleman appeared and offered to retrieve his cordless Sawzall from his truck. I was thankful for his offer but was reluctant to place a reciprocating metal blade that close to my child’s body. We agreed that would be a last resort and he stood at the ready.

Suddenly, my son’s stoicism broke and tears began to stream down his face. Concerned that our efforts had further pinched his arm, I leaned in and tried to comfort him. It took several minutes before I understood his heightened level of concern. He had overheard both my conversation with the manager and the gentleman with the power-tools. From those two conversations, he had inferred the following:

1.     Dad has assured the manager that we would not break the chair.
2.    A man had offered use of his Sawzall.
3.   The only logical conclusion was that the Sawzall was going to be used to amputate his arm so that, other than the bone fragments and blood, the chair could be spared any trauma.

Once I reassured him that I would sooner set fire to the building than cut off his elbow, he calmed down and someone emerged from the kitchen with a claw hammer and pry-bar. After several spirited attempts, the chair finally gave way with a loud crack and the ordeal was over.  

The crowd dispersed just as quickly as it had gathered and the manager kindly offered my son a complimentary dessert. Normally we would have taken the offer, but he was still understandably upset and my wife whisked him out to the car while I waited for the check. She said that as they moved through the gift shop, she overheard one female patron whisper to the other one, “That’s the kid with the arm!!”

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago. We are all seated around the table eating when my wife and I began talking about all of us going out to dinner over the weekend. I thoughtlessly mentioned Cracker Barrel and my wife echoed the sentiment and wondered aloud why it had been so long since we had eaten there.

As she was saying this, we both remembered that there was a very specific reason we had not been in awhile and immediately turned our attention to youngest son. His face was stricken, he had dropped his fork and was saying, “No! No! Cracker Barrel” while holding his arm.

With the promise of a quilt or coat between his body and the chair, we were successfully able to get him over his fear of Cracker Barrel (or just subjected him to further childhood trauma). If I find him seated in a wooden rocking chair facing the corner of his room muttering “ya’ll come back real soon!” we will just add a little more crypto to the therapy fund.