Short Story Children – Shoes
Photo credit: earl53 from morguefile.com
I studied in a government school in a small village many years ago. One day the teacher was teaching us about the train. Only very few had seen a train and only one girl had traveled by train. The teacher showed us the picture of the train and explained how it ran using steam engine.
I told my father about the train and I asked him to take us for a train journey. He kept saying,” one day I will take you.” . I kept dreaming about it and shared them with my younger sister. I reminded my father again and again.
After a few days, we went to our Aunt’s place. They were staying in a far away town. We went in my father’s Ambassador car. We stayed there for a day. Next day before we started, I reminded my father about the train journey. Then, my father’s best friend who was with us suggested that he would take us by train. Me and my sister were very excited. We stayed that night there. We felt that the time was going too slow.
Next day was a working day. But we had taken leave from the school to travel by train.
In the morning , our all three cousins got ready to go to school. The eldest girl was elder to me, the middle one my age, and the youngest one my sister’s age. They were studying in one of the best convents there. They were wearing their uniform with tie and shoes. We looked at them with admiration.
Our train was just after they left. We told Uncle,( my father’s friend ) that we also wanted a pair of shoes and wanted to buy a pair each. He did not agree to that. He asked my Aunt to give us two pairs of old shoes of her children. All their socks were washed and were wet. So Aunt warned us that it would hurt if we wore them without socks. But we wouldn’t listen and kept saying, “that is OK, that is OK”.
Anyway myself and my sister wore the shoes and got ready. We were dropped at the railway station. We walked from the car to the platform.By then it self, our feet started getting hurt.We looked at each other and made faces. But we didn’t want uncle to know about it. We sat quietly in the station. We didn’t run around.
You can not imagine the excitement we had when the train came. Uncle carried and kept both of us in the train. Then uncle got in.
We felt very stylish because we were wearing shoes. We made sure that other passengers noticed it, by moving our legs up and down.We kept looking out through different windows. We were so thrilled that we refused to sleep for a while. But I think we had a small nap before we reached our nearest station.
Uncle woke us up and we jumped from our seats. Oowwww ! This time our feet really got hurt. We could feel the bite of the shoes.
With great difficulty, we walked up to the car. As soon as we got in to the car, we removed our shoes.
My sister said, ” our school is so good. they don’t ask us to wear shoes. We are lucky.”
I said, ” I don’t know how they wear it everyday to school. I feel sorry for them. ”
–END–
