I've been accused of being too sentimental, I know my friends think so, I know my mom thinks so, sometimes I even think that I can overdo the whole "oh that's so amazingly, incredibly, entirely gorgeous" thing, but something really struck me the other day, and I'll relay it here.

After ordering a pizza from Bertucci's - I decided to run to a convenience store down the street from my house in Somerville, Ma. It was a small, nondescript place from the outside and looked rather dingy, the door stained with tobacco and the signs for 'Coke-a-Cola' in the window long since faded. I walked in the door and to my surprise six or seven very old very Italian men were sitting in lawn chairs -- right in the middle of the store watching the lottery and Keno on the television. They were chatting and joking and smoking cigarettes. The store smelled of homemade pizza, spices and smoke. And as I bought my Sprite I could not help but smile at their evening activity. They seemed so real, so tangible - so part of something you read about only in old novels or see in Norman Rockwell paintings.

It's people like this that give me hope in human kind -- people like this that make me happy. It is the truckers, the farmers, the old ladies in The North End, the people who seem to have so little materially or who seem to be of another time, that are truly human.

Although the subject has been beaten to the point of being undead it really does scare me that the Wal-Marts and Starbucks of the modern age will eventually squelch these small bits of humanity, these small bits of sanity.

I'm glad that I'm still living in a time where I can witness these moments of beauty. The seem to vanish more and more each day.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.