11.25.04

Jimmy

Today is one of the few days a year that almost everyone spends with family and friends. I myself spent it with family by blood and family by experience. To me they're the same. These days, family can and should have a more open definition, because it really just comes down to the group of people that you love.

Down the street from my house in Brooklyn is a small corner store where I go to buy milk. OK, well maybe not milk, but Coke and lemon Snapple at the very least. Anyhow, this store is run and owned by a 60 year old latino guy named Jimmy. I'm assuming he owns it, as he's the only person I've ever seen work there in the 2 years I've lived here. Jimmy works all the time.. and when I say all the time I don't mean 9-5. He's there from 6:30AM to 10PM - 7 days a week. Whenever I think I work hard, I think of Jimmy, as should you from now on.

The point of all this is that I don't KNOW Jimmy like I know the people that I ate with today. We make polite "Hey, how's it going today" half laughing banter whenever I'm there, but nothing beyond that. Well yesterday I said to him, "So, you got good plans for the holiday?" and he replied, "Ya, I'm going to close early". Now he may have meant that he's closing early and going to his daughters house out in Jersey, but something tells me that Jimmy doesn't have a family to have Thanksgiving dinner with. And that makes me terribly sad.

If I were in Brooklyn for the holiday, I would have invited him to my house. But I'm here in Connecticut, not there.

I hope Jimmy has family to be with today, because no one should have to be alone on one of the few days a year that everyone should spend with family and friend.