Who Are the People in Your Wawa?

New e-book finds humor and empathy just past the doors of the local Wawa.

November 07, 2017

SWARTHMORE, Pa. – The Delaware County Daily Times writes that Wawa, a convenience store chain that “draws in people from all walks of life who are looking for a quick bite to eat, a pack of smokes or to fill up their gas tanks,” serves as the backdrop for comedian Nick Kupsey’s new e-book, “The Five People You Meet in Wawa,” a tongue and cheek play off of the novel, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.”

“Wawa’s kind of like a trip through hell,” Kupsey told the news source in reference to the titling of his book. “And it’s not that the store itself is bad. I felt like it was Dante’s Inferno when you’re taking this trip … and it’s kind of like a mix between hell and purgatory. It’s the opposite of who you would meet in heaven. Who would you meet at Wawa and why would you meet them?”

He also said took him all of five minutes to decide which personas to highlight in the book. “If you frequent a Wawa enough and you pay attention, you’ll see it’s the same people that go there,” he told the news source. “It’s the same kind of daily tragedy that plays out every day. Sometimes it’s very sad, sometimes it’s funny. It’s humanity is what it really is; the spectrum of humanity in a Wawa.”

Kupsey noted that he wrote the book at a time when people need to have more empathy towards one another. “With how we treat each other in the world now we’ve lost empathy as a culture, as a people,” he told the news source. “We’re fighting with each other all the time and we forget that we’re a part of something larger. To me, it’s an exercise of empathy. Do you want to make fun of these people or do you want to relate to them?

“That’s how I felt when writing it and that’s how I hope people would view it.”

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