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A bag of french fries
My grandfather is the noblest man that I know, second only to my father. Though we never have shared the same zip code, it has always felt as if we did. With close to 700 kilometers standing between us, the telephone represents our only link. Through the countless days, weeks, and months that my family has lived in this city, I have spoken to my grandfather on the phone. Every Sunday of the week means a phone call from the noblest man I know, and each time we speak I am greeted in the same way. When picking up the phone, the first thing I hear is always “My most beautiful granddaughter. How are you?” I then answer back, and the next thing that he says is what will make me remember him until the day I die. He says, and has always said, “Very well, like a bag of French fries.” I have heard those seven words more than two hundred times, I’d say. Why he says those exact words, I’ll never know. It is neither a famous saying nor a common expression. My aunt says that it’s his old age that gives him weird habits like that, and I don’t know what to think. Whatever it is, hearing those words always makes me happy. Whether he is happy or sad, or mad and frustrated, or feels perfectly healthy or his memory is fading, he never forgets to say those words. On more than one occasion I have asked him what the meaning of his words is, and just as I always hear him say that he is as well as a bag of French fries, I always hear the same response: “You will understand when you have a granddaughter as good as the one I have.” There are many more days, weeks, and months yet to come before I can get a granddaughter of my own, and hopefully only then will I understand what he meant, but on the meantime, I will just keep looking forward to his phone calls and his words. I can always count on him and his bag of French fries. Though I am not the only grandchild of his, I am the only one that gets to enjoy the privileges that my grandfather’s words bring. Often dismissed as unimportant or irrelevant, to me those words bear incredible meaning. They are said by the noblest man I know, who will never explain what he means with his strange words. And every time I think of him, I know he is as well as a bag of French fries.
