Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (and restaurant) is arguably my favorite place in the world for breakfast. Not only is the home cooking hard to beat – they put hashbrown casserole on the map, afterall – there’s always plenty to do. For those of you not familiar with this eatery,  it’s a restaurant and old-time store, featuring movies, candies, and other trinkets from the past as well as toys, garden decor, candles, quilts, clothing… the list goes on and on. Talk about up-selling…

It’s a landmark in its own right that dots the interstates of the southeast U.S. And it’s the only restaurant I know of that has a peg game on every table.

For anyone not familiar with the peg game, the board is a wooden triangle with 15 holes, and 14 golf tees. The object of the game is to jump all the pegs, ultimately leaving one lone peg in order to be crowned peg game champion. Sounds easy, I’m sure. But there’s a reason the game lists your IQ, dependent on the number of pegs each player leaves behind:

Leave one peg? You’re a genius

Leave two pegs and you’re purty smart.

Leave three and you’re just plain dumb.

Leave four or more and you’re just plain “EG-NO-RA-MOOSE”

And no one wants to be an “egnoramoose,” now, do they? Least of all, my 8-year-old son, who grabbed the game as soon as our order had been placed. He started out with a respectable three pegs left. Then it was my turn. I left two.

The challenge was clearly building and he demanded to know how I’d done it.

“Sheer luck, dear. I promise.”

“I can NEVER leave just two!”

“Yes you can. Keep trying.”

And he left five, madder than ever, as he passed the game back to me. Then it happened, as the gods of the peg game shined their skills on me. I left one peg. Yep, for the first time in years (I used to know the code) I’d managed to prove my IQ right there in Cracker Barrel for all the world (or at least all who were there) to see. Colton was really getting annoyed at that point, and, no longer even trying, left more pegs than he jumped.

Which is when he morphed into a 3-year-old right in front of my eyes. First he crossed his arms and slammed his elbows down on the table. Then he formed the evil scowl on his face, starred cruelly at the wall beside us and never blinked an eye when his pancakes came.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Look. Thomas Edison failed about 9,000 times before inventing electricity. What if he’d have acted like you are acting right now? We’d been sitting here in the dark – no griddle to cook those pancakes and bacon on, no oven to brown the biscuits. No machines to churn your chocolate milk. Be mad all you want, but when you quit trying out of anger, don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.”

“Hmmpf. This is a stupid game and I never want to play it again,” he snarked.

“You know what? I think that’s a fabulous idea,” I said. “In fact, next time I come here to eat, I’ll just get a babysitter for you and I’ll come by myself.”

We finished our breakfast in virtual silence. And the one who “wasn’t hungry” finally decided to eat, consuming his breakfast as if he were a siphon. The scowl softened just a tad.

I made it up to the checkout without further incident, and was about to pay, when I heard Colton.

As I turned around, I noticed he had a peg game, packaged and ready for sale in his hands.

“Hey, Mom! Can we get this?”

I was unable to control the words that came out of my mouth in the following moments, leaving me to wonder if perhaps I was behaving as a 3-year-old, too.

“Not today. I’m not playing anymore.”

-Liz