Showing posts with label grandkids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grandkids. Show all posts

Friday, September 6, 2019

The (In)Famous Grandpa


Discount stores (the one dollar shop, the five dollar shop, etc..) and fast food eateries (the local ones, as well as the foreign names of McDonald's, Burger Ranch, and  others) are an  all-family fun experience involving parents, grandparents, kids, siblings .
(I rather pity the staff  for the noisy atmosphere under which they work, especially during school-holidays. The place is not a museum where children and adults alike silently contemplate works of art).

MAX chain of discount stores - main branch, Nethanya, near Ikea

Our most popular discount stores are 'Max 20' of the 'Max' chain (Max - the name of the owner, 20 israeli shekel - about $5- maximum price of most items ). 
The most popular fast food places, being the local falafel/shuwarma/kebab/schnitzel/shakshouka/
veggie omelettes eateries, and , of course,.. McDonald's branches.

entrance and main street window of a 'Max 20' store

inside a 'Max 20' store

Mc Donald's branch

poster attached to the  window with  food names

 same poster attached to the inside counter of the eatery

Anyway, it so happened to me once, that after buying some household items at one of the discount stores, I entered a near by fast food eatery to get myself a bite to eat. While sitting at the table I noticed a small group of four (previously seen at the discount shop) that looked like grandparents and their two grandkids

people sitting at tables at Mc.Donald's

girls enjoying  shuarma at a popular local eatery

The man's face seemed familiar. It was. It belonged to a chief pathologist at the Forensic Institute -  involved, at that time, in a terrible public scandal regarding mishandling  of removed organs and tissues from corpses.

( He was found guilty and released from  his post. He managed to escape jail as he had answers, and not many people had the professional capacity to contradict him. There was also the desire to close the case and not prolong suffering of the involved families, among them families of two late TV figures and an army general).

I couldn't take my eyes off of  the four. Grandpa was very gentle with his grandies (a boy and a girl about 9-10 years old), helping them with cutting  (no pun intended) their food portions .
I kept thinking and asking myself whether the two kids knew and understood the line of work of their grandfather, whether they read about him in the media,  asked him questions about the scandal. 

My curiosity remained, of course,  unanswered.  It ended up though, with me feeling angry at myself for totally failing to see the bad guy that was - perhaps - deeply hidden in that frail, gentle grandpa.