Perspective: Everyday sweetness in America  Syndicated Columnist
Published Saturday, October 21, 2006  I was misunderstood
growing up and have often been misunderstood since, but then so
is everyone else. People are busy, and you can't expect them to
drop everything and try to understand you. If you want to be
understood, practice kindness and mercy. Kindness is seldom
mistaken for anything else. Small kindnesses reverberate a long
time in people's hearts.  A woman checking IDs at the airport
saw me coming the other day and said, "Good morning, sunshine."
She didn't know me from Adam. She glanced at my driver's license
and said, "Have a good flight, darling." This was in the South,
of course -- in Austin, Texas, to be exact. Northern women would
no sooner address a strange man as Sunshine than they would ask
if you wanted to see their underwear. But that woman's Sunshine
shone on me for the rest of the day, and a week later I still
remember it. Like I remember old waitresses in diners who
addressed everyone a