I had a whole day off today as we approach Christmas weekend.  Victoria, my daughter, asked me if I could take Brayden, her oldest son, for the afternoon so that she could complete her workweek, which I said, “I would be glad to.”

Brayden is 6 years old and will turn 7 at the end of this month.  Over the months, I have picked him up from school Tuesdays and Thursdays and have kept him until his mom comes from work.  Our time together has been priceless as we have bonded over the months like never before.

Today also happened to be the Christmas party of Airpark Auto Service, an auto repair facility that Nadine owns and runs in north Scottsdale.  We were invited to the party so around 11:50 Brayden and I took off to the shop to eat some wonderful Mexican food from a popular eatery in the area.  While we were waiting to eat, Brayden began to look around at the shop and noticed all the awards that Airpark Auto had received over the years.  He also noticed that each award had a picture of the owner, Nadine, and her key staff accepting the award.

He asked who owned the shop and when I told him, he stopped and said, “Grandma Nay Nay is famous.  She is in all the pictures around the shop.”  He knew Grandma Nay Nay as a cool person that loved him and made meals when he would come over.  He knew her as someone who periodically would pick him up at school and take him out for ice cream.  He knew her as being married to Grandpa.  He knew her as someone who would come and help bandage up his wounds when he was over at her house and needed that kind of attention.

But today, he saw her differently.  He saw her in an environment that he had never experienced, her auto repair shop.  He saw all the awards that she and her shop won and saw the pictures that dotted the waiting room.  She was a person of much public recognition.  She was a person of many awards.  She was recognized by her peers as someone who exemplified ethics in a world where ethics is challenged (auto repair industry).  His eyes were opened to a whole new dimension of Grandma’s life he had never known until today.  He saw her as famous.

On this journey we will come in contact with people who seem normal in so many respects.  We have a tendency to take them for granted until we take the time to get to know those normal people around us and understand different areas of their life that we were never exposed to.  Maybe, just maybe, we will come face to face with a person who is famous.