Today, Monday, was my fourth day volunteering at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in Przemyśl, Poland. Only six kids registered into the safe space today. There were three volunteers, so we volunteers were able to interact closely with each of the kids, and there were some fun moments. One little boy comes to mind, probably about years old, I’ll call him “Macky” here for short, was a real spark plug — I was playing improv baseball with another boy, about 10 years old, when Macky swooped in and started shagging “fly balls” for us. Didn’t matter where the ball went – left field, right field, under a chair, Macky was hot on the trail. And the best thing, giggling and grinning ear to ear, he would run all the balls he had collected back to the batter. When the batter pointed out that it was I, the pitcher that needed the balls, Macky caught on right away and started running the balls directly back to me. We were all ecstatic.
Later in the afternoon, while playing some pickup tag with one of the other volunteers, Macky had another brainwave — he put one of the net storage baskets over his head and began running around in circles full speed. He looked like a big wastebasket with legs (I would have loved to take a photo, but understandably photography is not permitted in the safe space when children are present. But please see the mock-up and captions below).

Macky’s getup reminded me of this character I saw in a Warsaw shopping center.

Of course, McDonalds is ubiquitous all around the world, and I’ve seen plenty of likenesses of Ronald McDonald in my time. I’ve also been subjected to galloping beer bottles, hopping hot dogs, toddling teletubbies, etc., but this was the first time I had ever seen walking french-fries. As I took this pic, I used my best tourist Polish to thank the fries for the opp — to which the fries responded with a nonchalant, somewhat bored, “no problem.”
I hope by the time Macky graduates college and begins looking for work, he can find something more stimulating than posing as french-fries in a Warsaw shopping center. I don’t know whether the guy in the french-fry suit is Ukrainian, but I’ve been seeing a lot of stories lately about highly skilled Ukrainian refugees taking menial jobs at pennies on the dollar, compared to what they would command if they were working in their fields of expertise.