one of the most shocking things i have heard in a long time

i just discovered the Curves workout about two weeks ago and am very much enjoying it.  one of the fun parts of being in Curves is it is all women, and they really encourage chatting with each other when you work out, that is if you can talk at all.  

so tonight, chatting with a few of the other women and the owner, the subject of eating meat came up, and one of the women was a die-hard vegetarian.  which is awesome.  and another lady loves to eat meat, which is equally awesome.  so the one who likes to eat meat of course was super excited about her steak the owner had just brought in for her and kind of egging on the vegetarian talking about eating baby cows, etc.  to which she responded "instead of eating baby animals, you should eat babies in china, there are too many of them over there anyway" in a joking voice, and after a bit of a pause, i reply with "daaaammmmmmnnnnn" and a big smile, kind of calling attention to a line she chose to jump over.  and i kind of got a smile out of her, and kind of got this sort of  "knowing" look, not sure if she was actually kidding.

i am a very non-judgmental person, and have heard of lots of shocking things in my life, this is probably right at the top.  and as i finished stretching and heading out to my car i couldn't help but think that something awfully bad must have happened in her life for her to make that kind of statement.  i kind of wanted to give her a huge hug and listen for a while, because i have a feeling not a lot of people get to the deep part of her, the place where that kind of hurt, pain, and hate is born in the broken part of her life.  for that to creep out of the cracks in her life must mean something is bursting and the walls are crumbling.