Saturday, November 20, 2010

No Comparison

89 year old Geneva Sozanski was outside of the Lynn Eastern Ave. two family  home where she has lived for fifty years or so.  
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At one o'clock in the afternoon,  a 30 year old punk, named Nicholas Christian, made it his business to jump out of his car, slam her to the ground with such force that she was bleeding and unconscious so that he could steal her purse.
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Christian is 30 years old.
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Mrs. Sozanski is a greatgrandmother with two sons... both Dentists.
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She has lived a long life of grace and dignity... and you can even now see the goodness in her beaten face.
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I first met Mrs. Sozanski when I was in the 7th grade, hanging out with her son, Stephen.  She was instrumental in my decision to attend graduate school at Boston University.  I ran into her outside of a bakery on Lewis Street in Lynn in the summer, shortly after I had graduated from UMASS and taken a job as a Planner for the City of Lynn.
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Mrs. Sozanski was happy to see me and we exchanged greetings, then she asked me where I was going to graduate school.  I explained to her that I had a job now and probably wouldn't be going back to school.  The look on her face was of shock and concern.  "Oh, you shouldn't stop now, John,  You have to get your Master's Degree,"  she said in a firm voice that I thought was uncharacteristic of her.  We exchanged a few more niceties, then went our separate ways down the street.
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Later on that week, I looked into the Master's Program of Urban Affairs at Boston University and enrolled in night school for the fall semester.  The firm nudge from Mrs. Sozanski was the catalyst.
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She is a warm and kind lady, and her comments to the media about the incident characterize her perfectly.
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So Christian... back to you.  If you have to knock old ladies senseless so that you can steal the paltry contents of their purses for your addictive fix, then, the worth of you as a human being speaks for itself.  Sadly, there will always be slime at the bottom of the barrel like you.  
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But what makes me high on life is the Geneva Sozanski's that I have run into.  People like Mrs. Sozanski make our lives so much richer, that we can afford to dismiss the depravity that you have made of your worthless life.   She makes us able to endure the likes of you.
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Good luck in the future, Christian.  People like you rarely make it to age 89 like Mrs. Sozanski ... odds are, you won't be seeing 39.

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