I was so grateful this afternoon when an older female stranger made a pleasant gesture at the grocery store. I told her how much I appreciated it. I said that so few people in public are pleasant any more. Many are downright aggressive. Not that there are no kind people, but way fewer than we really need. I try to be friendly when I'm up to it. I'm at least not unfriendly without justifiable provocation. Though some people seem to appreciate friendliness, others not as much. The kindest people I know in my community happen to be people originally from Mexico and Central America. Truly! Knowing some of the lies and unfair generalizations made about the people from those parts of the world make me so angry!

I live in a Mid Atlantic state. Obviously, parts of this region have a reputation for being less friendly than people in other states, but it doesn't apply everywhere in the region. There is a beauty about some areas in my region. It is a melting pot where people tend to be more accepting of people from other cultures than some places in the country with more of a friendly (or selectively friendly) reputation.