Grandparents in the News Again

Maybe it’s because the Baby Boomers are getting older (and older) or because I too am an aging grandparent, but I seem to notice there are a lot of grandparents in the news lately. There were two online news items that caught my eye recently, both disturbing for different reasons.

First the grandfather that was fired from his job after his employers saw him wrestle a shark away from some children at a beach in Australia on You Tube. Apparently he was on a sick leave of absence and the bosses that be figured if he wasn't too sick to go on vacation (and save the lives of some kids on the side) he wasn’t too sick to be at work. His job, from which he and his wife were both fired, was with a children’s charity also. How’s that for irony?

The second story involved a grandmother standing trial for killing her grandson. Apparently he had been living with her when his parents moved away. He fell in with a bad drug using crowd and traces of the over-the-counter drug, Spice, a powerfully addictive synthetic designer drug was found in his bloodstream at autopsy. The grandmother shot and killed him after he kicked her in the stomach and head demanding $2000 and her car. I am sure more details have come out during the trial but regardless of how the trial ends, this is truly a tragedy for this family.

In the meantime I am just planning on continuing in my search for some good grandparent news items.