WHEN DID WE BECOME SO MANY AMERICA'S?

There's a special corner in the near-northside which for me is kind of a trinity-of-truth. Here -- all in one neighborhood intersection -- America's three major sub-cultures meet. All within a friendly few feet...!

On the southeast corner -- a busy new Fed Ex office. On the southwest corner -- a cozy old coffee shop. There tucked into the northwest corner -- one of those neighborhood walk-in health clinics. The first is where today's action is! The second, where it was! The third, where a lot of us end up regardless of age!
Some details to flesh out this trinity.

The Fed Ex office bristles with Internet stations, xerox machines, various print and reproduction systems, along with a thriving backdoor fleet of trucks taking in and shipping out important packages to all corners of the city. Median age: 30-ish. Standard dress: smart but casual. Usual conversation: Business and the Bears.

Now the coffee shop is hardly new. Its old signage goes with the age of the neighborhood. Nothing bristles here except maybe some cranky tempers when the coffee arrives too tepid. Median age: 60-ish. Standard dress: casual casual. Usual conversation: Body aches and children in their 3o's who never call.

That health clinic is one of hundreds popping up throughout the metropolitan area. Everything from bruises to burns to flu shots. I've been in one or two, and they're usually a sullen portrait in pain. They serve a 24/7 purpose as the locals keep bumping into their physical fallibility's. Pain, regardless of age or aspirations, is one of the great levellers.

There was a time when there were more levellers. And not quite as many sub-cultures. Funny thing is that now with so many electronic ways to instantly connect, we're often more disconnected than ever. Rarely do we share the same sports or movies or TV programs or books or comedians or even national missions like our incredibly brave GIs fighting to keep little intersections like this one safe.
I visit the Fed Ex office and the gray in my hair stands out as an exception; I grab a breakfast in the coffee shop but frankly here I'm still not gray enough. Strangely, the only visit that reassures and re-connects me is that clinic. Here there are neither generational nor aspirational gaps to get in the way. Sit here for a awhile and you quickly remember what modern living helps you forget. We're really all the same where it counts...

...inside. Inside the heart, the soul, the essence, or maybe the DNA. Whatever it is, it is; and we forget this at our peril.