Today I got in line and prepared to wait my normal hour long ordeal. A little old man got in line behind me and was holding an 8x10 manila envelope. You could tell he personally addressed it as the writing on it was the scripty/scrolly handwriting that was popular in the early 1900's. What a lost art form.
I casually mentioned to the man that I really liked the writing on his envelope. He smiled a crooked smile and began to tell me about how he makes drawings for the ladies at the church, the ladies at the bowling alley, and the ladies at the bank. Apparently, he's a real ladies' man. He was absolutely adorable. He told me a story about how his granddaughter asked him to make a drawing for her teacher, because she was afraid the teacher didn't like her. After she gave the teacher his drawing, the teacher hugged his granddaughter and told them that they were buddies.
He told me that when movies went from black and white to color, that he watched them and enjoyed the script handwriting shown on the titles and decided that he wanted to write like that, so he taught himself.
This is who his envelope was addressed to, the John Hancock insurance company. He made the writing look exactly like the logo, on purpose. Even the address, city, state and zip was in the same scripty font. He pointed out to me all of the k's in the address were like the John Hancock k. He even had some whiteout on the envelope, and showed me where he accidently spelled the name John wrong. (He said spelled it "Jhon" and had to re-do it.)
We chatted about where he lived throughout his life and he really seemed to enjoy telling me about himself. He said he is 89 years old. He said, "You know the bad thing about getting old? Getting older!"
I never got his name, but I received such an unexpected gift from him with his conversation and smiles.
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