Sitting in the booth and waiting for a waitress, I couldn't help overhearing a conversation between two senior citizens enjoying coffee at the counter of a small, local diner.

They were reminiscing about grade school days."It was a rough time," said one old man, a gent with a loud, crackling voice, his furrowed brow emphasizing the word rough."My mom didn't have much, but always scraped things together. She had to pack my school lunch by seeing what she could come up with," the man recalled."But one thing I always had was bread," he went on."That's because she baked it every day. Flour was cheap and she knew how to make delicious homemade bread. I took it to school every day and never got tired of it."He paused.I could tell he was thinking about something meaningful and important. Maybe a memory he wasn't sure he should share. Probably painful, I thought.Then he continued."At lunchtime, we all sat outside in the schoolyard and opened up our lunch bags. I was embarrassed if the other kids saw that my lunch was nothing but homemade bread, sometimes with molasses on it. And there was one kid that always stared at me."I knew his family. They lived here in town. They had money. One day at lunchtime he finally came over to talk to me."All he wanted to know was where I got those big, crusty slices of bread that I ate every day. He just wanted to know which store sold it. He said it looked good and he wanted to try it."When I told him my mom baked it, his eyes opened wide. He said he never heard of homemade bread. He was amazed. Then he told me how his own mom relied on store-bought items. He said his lunch, like mine, was the same every day."He went on to ask if he could trade his lunch for mine. I figured, why not?"Turns out, his lunch was something I'd always wanted Tastykakes! Gosh, I never had a Tastykake before. We didn't have money to buy Tastykakes. I didn't know anything about how they'd taste. It was a thrill for me to trade lunches with him!"So there we sat, him eating my mom's homemade bread and me with my first Tastykakes."Again, he paused. There might've been a tear in his eye."My new pal liked the bread," the man said. "But I think he really liked the idea that it took my mom hours to make."Then all at once he stopped speaking. There was silence.The two old-timers quietly sipped their coffee.A poignant moment, powerful and unexpected.It was as if they needed time to digest food for the soul.I paused, too, thinking about today's school kids. And I thought about single parents and challenges of our day.Could this same scenario play out today, I wondered.Certainly, modern school cafeterias have taken the place of schoolyard lunches. And most will agree we're living in a different, more prosperous era.But core values remain the same, and time is still the most precious gift.Yes, we live in a Tastykake world, I thought.Do mothers or fathers bake bread anymore? Does anybody have time to bake homemade bread?If not, we need to slow down and make time for what's important.