Thanks for sharing this fine story!

Life is great, as that kind of small and ordinary things (like couple of honest, friendly words from two Italian gentlemen) can have a lot of inspirational and empowering effect. This is how I believe in a grass-root silent reform; the more we ordinary people learn to respect others as individuals, the more there will be love and empathy in this world.

For me one such experience was when I was a young father, and I spent most of my time at home taking care of our son. We lived in a city, and living in our block there were a handful of other families where wifes stayed at home with their kids. They were about ten years older than I was, they had a working class background, and I was a long haired hippie man studying at the University. But the mothers never treated me as 'different' - since I was a responsible parent I was welcome to the group, and we helped each other a lot. Like, any of the mothers could just call me saying "I'd need to visit a bank to sort out some paper stuff - could you please take care of my kids for a while?" - for me this was the first time in my life when I really felt that I'm accepted and respected just the way I am.