The People in the Next Booth

Peter’s Restaurant is one of the loveliest spots on the planet, albeit one of thousands of such places across Canada and much of the world. Twenty or so tables and booths, gallons of hot coffee, sweet servers, hearty menus, what’s not to like?

Karen and I show up most Sunday mornings for a late breakfast and enough coffee to keep us awake for two or three days. And we’re not alone in this, families and couples and friends come and go, waiting patiently at the door for a booth or a table to free up. Everything that’s wonderful about small town Canada can be found on a Sunday morning at Peter’s.

I’m not one to actively eavesdrop, but sometimes the folks in the next booth aren’t very good about keeping their private affairs to themselves. Mostly, though, those private affairs are wholesome business, about kids going off to university, crop prices, plans for a kitchen reno, or why their sister is finally going to ditch her no-good husband. It’s all but impossible to not listen in, invitation or not.

It’s not long before it strikes you that their stories are not that different from your own, the joys, the disappointments, the triumphs, the dreams, and the milestones. In them you hear your own circumstances, perhaps differently flavoured, but made of the same stuff.

But as the mind wanders, you’re reminded that there’s a Peter’s Restaurant in the next town, and the next, just with a different name. I’ve sat in the same booth having the same breakfast with the same coffee and the same waitress in Lumsden, Saskatchewan and Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia. And in England, and in America, too.

There are over eight billion of us on this small planet, most of whom have some variation of Peter’s. Men dressed in white robes sitting solemnly in the shade of the largest tree in the village, women pounding maize into flour while singing traditional songs, families leaving Friday prayers in Jordan gathering at the home of a favourite aunt … Not all the same colour, not all the same tongue, not all the same faith, but the same hopes and fears and dreams, the same loved ones.

And then you realize that somewhere in Ukraine a drone is crashing into their Peter’s Restaurant, and in Iran the talk is about a daughter or niece or granddaughter who had the misfortune of being in class when one of Pete Hegseth’s missiles tore into it.

These are the people in the next booth, too.

What’s wrong with us?