The Young Rich Cobbler

_{Photo by Greg Rosenke}

One of the fun things in growing up in a ghetto is that you get to have a lot of time to play with your friends because our parents are either at work or at their various shops hustling, so they really don't pay that much attention to us during the day, especially on weekends when we're not in school. Unlike the kids of the rich folks back then close to our streets who rarely were allowed to come out to play.

I remember them sneaking out every once in a while when their parents are not around to come play a bit with us, and then run back inside to go freshen up once it starts getting close to when their parents will come back home.

Anyway, having enough time in our hand meant freedom to do almost anything, luckily for us we weren't bad kids who engaged in immoral acts so when I wasn't playing with my friends, I found myself doing something that I learned without any prior knowledge of how to do it.

It all started during one afternoon when I was bored at home. My friends had not come out to play that day (their parents must had forced them to take an afternoon nap), so I just started brainstorming on what I could possibly do to wile away time and that was when the idea of making a carton flip flop slipper came to me.

For some reason I just knew it was going to be a walk in the park for me, all I needed was just a scissor, a water gum and of course cartons, all of which my mom had in her shop. So after gathering my equipments, I got to work. I used a pen to draw the shape on my slippers on the carton and then traced the sharp with the scissors before sticking everything together with the water gum.

It was a simple thing for me to do and so I felt it would be easy for my friends to learn it too if they saw me doing it right in front of them, so I took everything inside our house and made the carton slippers in there.

I remember when I first wore one of it, how shocked and surprised all of my friends had been. They immediately all wanted one and wanted me to teach them how to make it themselves but I refused and instead sold it to them for a price and before I knew it, I could afford two biscuits at once, I became the young rich cobbler.

I could tell you for a fact that that did change my life for a minute because the more biscuits I bought, the more meaningful life became for me. Unfortunately, no one wants their kid to become a cobbler when he can be an engineer or a doctor, so I stopped and the biscuits stopped coming and then I got reminded that nothing good lasts forever.