Scene From A Mall

I am always amazed at watching the human being evolve from in front to adult. In my stature as a senior human being i.e. grandpa I am watching a number of young human beings transition from childhood and early adulthood and the process is fascinating.

I have a granddaughter who is at the transition point of child and adolescent are actually she's been adolescent now for some time. It is been a pretty good transition, she's a great kid, great sister, great daughter, great student and great granddaughter.( grandpa survival mode: I have a number of beautiful, smart above average granddaughters, this is the story of one of those granddaughters and me). Yesterday, was a busy day for me, which is good. I still sit on volunteer board of a local Salt Lake private nonprofit. This board meets once a week, on Tuesday mornings. Since I'm no longer with 211 I don't travel downtown as much as I used to. But the Assist board allows me a reason get on the train and the bus, in the morning of the day and travel downtown. Yesterday's meeting was short and I felt liberated heading out into the city. Now the meeting starts at 11 o'clock in today's meeting was over by 1130 so I figured what the heck I will treat myself lunch in the city. Instead of jumping the train going to a place I might usually have lunch I decided to take surface streets and find something interesting to eat.I was certainly aware, painfully so, how little choice of food options are in downtown Salt Lake. Oh, there's upscale restaurants which is never easily justified as far as price versus quality of food then there's a host of roach coaches but they're usually Hispanic or Asian and I've done too much of both recently. So I opted out jump to train and go all the way to First South area to the City Creek mall.

City Creek Mall is a relatively large open air mall straddling MainStreet downtown Salt Lake City. It is a mall of extravagance or at least it pretends to be. However, like every mall this mall has a food court and that's where I was headed. The problem with mall food is, especially in upscale malls, it's regular fast food only pretentious. The vendors have foreign names, fancier photos of food on the front of their space and somewhat nicer music and usually lower lights but in the end it's mall food that's okay. I understand mall food. I know but I still like to circle the food court just on the half chance there might be something really interesting to consider. So, I was zooming around the food trying in vain, to find something new and all of a sudden I heard “ Grandpa!!” Bear in mind that the food court was still pretty full, it was the last half hour of lunch break so there's a lot of white noise as is the case in food courts but still something gave me pause. I some how recognize this voice this grandpa with an exclamation mark! I heard the call again and stopped my forward motion and spun my chair around and there to my surprise was Ani, My almost 10th-grader granddaughter sitting with a couple friends having lunch. I was shocked and I was thrilled, to come across such a friendly face in a mall.

Ani actually been as I was presented with her friends. I was pleased to meet her friends, I smiled and greeted and validated Ani's statement that I indeed was her grandpa. I waited just long enough but knew I needed to get out there so Ani could get back to her teenage life. Smiled once more zipped away.

As I ate my lunch, some knockoff Philadelphia cheese steak sandwich, you begin to dawn on me I had been given with the highest compliments and adolescent can bestow upon A relative. She didn't choose slide down and tried to be invisible while I flew I in my wheelchair afraid that I might see her. Instead she screamed my name in a crowded mall to make sure I noticed that she was there. I think she didn't care if she was seen with me. I was her grandpa/I AM her grandpa and that's all that matters.