Sal’s Pizza

Every Sunday, after my visit with Joe, as I am heading out of Nashville, I stop at Sal’s Pizza. It’s a little cozy pizza joint that I found one Sunday while heading back to Knoxville. You can order at the counter or dine in. All the tables have red and white checkered tablecloths that you would expect in a pizza parlor and football is always on the little televisions that are mounted on the wall, while the faint sound of top 40 hits plays in the background. Sometimes I get my slice of mushroom to go. Other days, when I’m feeling more  positive, like today, I sit inside and eat. I started thinking about that saying “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always,” and it made me think about how many people we run into on a daily basis. We run into people at the grocery store, in traffic, at work, at church, walking downtown, at the movie theater, at a restaurant, everywhere really, and we never know what it’s like inside their head or in their “other” life, the one that they go home to or the one that they are escaping from to be where they are at that one particular moment when they run into you. I know that on more than one occasion, I have walked into that place, smiled my big “everything is wonderful, life is perfect” smile, only to get half a mile down the road and have to pull over in a truck parking lot until I could breathe again because I couldn’t stop crying knowing that I was getting further and further away from someone terribly dear to me and the sweet little guy at the register just knows that most Sunday’s I stop in for my slice of mushroom with extra cheese. But they are always nice to me and no matter how rough my morning was, my afternoon is always brightened up a little by those red and white checkered tablecloths. I guess that saying is right, we should be nice to one another. Always. Because you never know when you will be that one person who really does make all the difference in the world.