Max To The Max Essay Research Paper

“I treated myself to a whole bunch of sweaters at L. S. Ayres last week,” exclaimed my hunched-over grandfather, as we all sat down at the kitchen table for lunch. L. S. Ayres is a department store in Indianapolis similar to Marshall Fields in Chicago.

I burst into laughter once I heard that he had bought a bunch of sweaters because when my Grandpa Max does anything, he does it to the max.

“How much is a whole bunch?” asked my giggling mother.

“Can you believe eight?”

Grandpa Max is probably the world’s biggest bargain hunter. As soon as I heard that he had purchased eight sweaters, I could hardly breathe because I could not contain my laughter. I thought he was going to say that he bought three or four sweaters, but eight? Eight, I thought, was even too much for Max. He probably needed one sweater, but he managed to find seven more because they were on sale.

Max and his wife, Janet, live in a condominium in Indianapolis, their home for over fifty years. Rolling out of bed at five thirty A.M. every morning, Max painfully stumbles to the kitchen where he prepares his pot of coffee. Groaning over the pain of his two bad knees and arthritic hip, he hobbles outside to retrieve his morning paper. When he comes back inside, he flops down in his chair and lets out a moan. During the course of one day, he sips and slurps about twenty-four cups of coffee.

Max usually ventures to his temple three to four times a week, and when it is chilly outside, he wears his black winter jacket. The jacket is solid black, but few years ago, he sat down on a newly painted white bench, and the paint got all over the back of it. So when people see an old, bald, chubby man with an odd-looking jacket, they know it’s Max Simon.

My mother and I went down to Indianapolis last year to help my grandparents move into their new condo, and when we arrived, we were slightly surprised to see that my grandpa had filled one of their cabinets with twenty jars of gefilte fish and about thirty cans of tuna. Max will eat about one jar of the gefilte fish and a couple of cans of tuna per year.

Max’s sense of perspective is off dramatically because he lost the vision in his left eye about three years ago. When Grandpa drives out of the condominium’s parking lot, he has an interesting way of passing over the speed bumps. He slouches in his seat and steps on the accelerator. Seeing the huge yellow speed bumps approaching, he slams on his brakes and the car comes to a halt. However, his Ford Taurus is still about five or six feet from the bump. Then he slams his foot on the pedal, and the car loudly clunks over the speed bump. Max then repeats this process for the remaining three speed bumps in the parking lot.

Grandpa Max is completely bald except for the two sides behind his ears. When I was little, one of the most common jokes that I heard from Grandpa Max was, “Can I borrow some hair of yours? If you let me have some hair, I will scoop you some broccoli ice cream!” It took about ten years for this joke to get old, and I really thought that he had some broccoli and asparagus ice cream in his freezer.

My Grandpa is also deaf, and it is very hard for him. He has eight percent hearing in one ear, and the other is not great, but it is much better. Nevertheless, he still can hear only if someone’s voice is loud and clear. On Shabbat, when our family sings the minute long blessing for the holiday, and he is present, I can’t stop laughing. Even though he is still singing the same melody and same Hebrew words as we are, he can’t hear well enough to stay with us, so he usually speeds ahead in his low, slow voice. Grandpa Max usually ends up as the only one singing.

Last year, at our Passover Seder, Max and about twenty of our friends were attending the celebration at our house. We started to sing a traditional Passover song in English, but all my grandpa could hear was the tune of the song, so he joined in with the Hebrew. Twenty people were singing the English version and one person was singing the Hebrew version-fast. I, of course, was the first one to start laughing, and then all of the kids, and a few seconds later, the adults had to do everything they could to hold their laughter back.

Max doesn’t care if he is late for an event. Last year, he took me to see a movie that started at 3:30 P. M, only we left his house at 4:15, and we didn’t arrive at the theater until 4:30. The man selling tickets was asking questions of my grandpa that made him look insane. “Are you sure you want to buy tickets? The movie started an hour ago.”

“Yea. Just give me two tickets,” replied Max.

We watched the movie and left the theater when the film was over. However, we sat out in the lobby of the complex and waited until the next show started so that we could see the beginning of the movie!

Only a man who comes to movies late, buys eight sweaters at a time, and races over huge speed bumps could offer his grandson broccoli ice cream.