Heather Christena Schmidt

It sounds like a song, doesn’t it?  Like I’m going to break out in that song from the wedding singer and continue on to call her the Sophisticated Momma.  Well, faithful blog followers, I wish it were just a song I was referencing.  Do I ever.  But no, I am referencing an actual Loud Mouth Lady.

This evening while visiting my father, we went out to dinner at Mimi’s Cafe.  Priding itself as a French-ish bistro, the place couldn’t be anything further from it, including its loud ass customers.  This is typical of the place, though, and since they have relatively cheap prices and great service, we usually deal with the loudness undisturbed.  Not tonight though!

Seated about four tables behind us was a table of three women, probably about the same age as me, having a ladies night out for salads at Mimi’s.  Not exactly what I would call a “ladies night,” but then I soon learned they were all newlyweds and off the market.  (But I’m off the market and still wouldn’t call that a ladies night…)  And actually, before any of our drinks were at the table, I learned just about everything about these women and their miserable marriages, particularly the loud one.

The loud one is married to a man named Dan whom she has been emasculating since they were dating.  His friends said she was not marriage material but she took great offense to this, and so now Dan has no friends and they are married.  Her biggest problem with him at first was the fact that he had three drawers full of socks.  Dan, of course, now has half of one.

A little later on I learned that Loud Mouth Lady also works with her husband, Dan.  But she doesn’t actually think he’s qualified to do the job he is in, so she talks smack about him to their coworkers nonstop.  None of this topped the defining moment of her incessant and nonstop chattering, though; that being when she announced that the worst part of being married was the sex, “but I just got used to laying there and letting him screw me until he was over it.”

I don’t think there was one person in that place who does not feel personally acquainted, now, with Loud Mouth Lady and her poor and seemingly pathetic husband, Dan.  Children in the restaurant were sitting with parents covering their ears; a table of people actually got their food to go because they couldn’t take the noise.  She was really just that awful.

Now, sure – just like that ridiculous woman at the library over the summer had every right to let her idiot kid run wild through the library, Loud Mouth Lady tonight at Mimi’s had every right to be a loud mouth.  Interestingly enough, this reminded me of a scenario when I was having coffee with a few friends a couple years ago at a local Starbucks.  We were talking and being relatively quiet (quieter than everyone else in the store), but after a while someone came over and asked us to quiet down because we were bothering them.  At the time I remember feeling completely indignant – how dare they ask me to quiet down, especially when we were being quieter than other people in the place?!  But now I can completely understand how one person being too loud for you can truly ruin your time out.

But then there is the matter of how to act as a functional member of society.  I am a big proponent of cursing, swearing, vulgarity – what have you; but there is a time and a place.  Yelling at the top of your voice in the middle of a restaurant is probably not the best place to be yelling “fuck” and “shit” every other word, or talking about letting your husband “screw” you while you lay there, a cold, dead fish.  This is like the cell phone argument, or the crazy children argument – in a restaurant, at what point has a person crossed a line?  I would argue that Loud Mouth Lady did.