Memoir
My family had always been poor, father was a serious alcoholic, and smoked a packet a day. It still makes me sad when I bring up the memory in my mind, because mother always wanted the best for us, and decided to divorce with him. We had no money, so mom would sometimes have to go to bed hungry, just to let us have whatever we had available to eat. Even the clothes we wore were old and ripped, all moldy and grey. My cap had 18 holes dotted all over it, and didn’t provide any protection for me at all.
Yet my most horrible memory of those times was my pair of shoes, I had worn the same pair for over four years, the other kids would take one look at me, and start pointing and laughing, we were too poor to go to school, and so I had no friends, no one there to stand up for me, no one there to play with me, no one there to like me. We had to be taught by mom, of whatever she could teach us. She tried to make it easy for us to follow along, but we just couldn’t do it.
I found myself sitting on concrete steps outside someone else’s house one day, clutching a new pair of shoes, I had stolen them, from the most expensive shoe store in town, This was the start of a new life for me, I laughed. “What have you got there, Brad?” It was mom. I remember everything else being a blur, my instincts kicked in, and I ran, I ended up running so far away that I left the border of the country, and found myself fighting for survival. News articles and papers started spreading everywhere. People looking for me. I was on the run...
Looking back at that scene, I probably should’ve just given the shoes back now, mother is dead, and I wasn’t even there to attend her funeral, I couldn’t have gone, I would’ve been noticed. I’ve made that grave mistake in my life, and there's no way to fix it.