Apple Pie

In our work Marti and I deal with a lot of skeptics, and I have a thousand stories like this one.  To my mind, I don't care either way whether the woman I'm writing about believes me or not.  It is after all, she that missed out on a chat with her father.  I know also that people on the other side are not always chomping at the bit to change a skeptic's tiny world view.


A while back, a lady we knew, who worked at the store where we were to hold a group meeting, told us she would be attending and she that was bringing a friend who was a big skeptic.

"Great!" I said a little sarcastically.  "Just don't tell me who she is because I don't want to know."

The next evening we held our group meeting and almost half way through the evening I had a deceased father wanting to speak to his daughter.  I was guided to the right woman in the audience, and he came up with one thing after another to say to her, to which the only response appeared to be "No, no, no, and no!"  After trying very hard with her father for her, I finally got fed up with her and I said to her dad in my mind, "I've had enough of her; she's not going to make me look a fool in front of everyone.  So finish up what you want to say to her, and let's move on to someone else.  Her dad then told her she liked sweet things.

"Yeah," she said, begrudgingly.

"He tells me you like apple pie."

"It's my favorite," she answered, nonchalantly.

"Well, your father say's 'enjoy the apple pie!'"  And with that I went on to speak to someone else in another part of the room, relieved to be done with her.

The gathering was quite large, so we had a short break for people to stretch their legs and to use the restroom. During the break, our friend came up to me and told me I had connected with her girlfriend.

"Oh, good," I replied.  "Where is she?" my curiosity piqued.

"She's gone.  She left when the break started.  She couldn't get out the door quick enough. You freaked her out!"

"Where was she sitting?" I asked.

"Over there," she said pointing. "She's the skeptic!"

I never realized who the skeptic was, because our friend was not sitting next to her.

A couple of days later we met our friend again at the store and I asked her if she spoken with her buddy, the skeptic.  She had:  "I called her yesterday on the phone.  Her husband answered and told me she wasn't taking any phone calls right then.  When I asked him why, he told me; 'My wife's been on a diet for a month and she's had this apple pie in the fridge for the last few days, and she's eating the whole apple pie as we speak!'"