Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Once upon a time there was a little boy who wanted a pair of leather shoes. He wanted them because his mother said they could not afford them.
‘They’re too expensive,’ she said, ‘and you don’t need them. Sand shoes are just fine for you.’
But the little boy was not happy about that. He wanted leather shoes because they showed that he was special and important. He wanted to be special and important because he felt that he was neither. He was small and ignored by his older brothers and all the boys and girls at school. He had no looks, no skills, couldn’t do anything particularly well, couldn’t make people laugh or like him or anything like that.
Every day he would pray to be someone different. Someone better, someone better looking, better at his work, better at talking, better at making people like him. He didn’t know how to go about it. He would look at the other boys and girls he thought were better than him and imitate them. They would try to talk like them, walk like them, smile like them. He even tried to dress like them. It was kind of hard with no money.
One day he got up and had an idea. ‘I know what,’ he said to himself. ‘I’ll imagine I’m like them. I’ll pretend I’m like them. I’ll dream I’m like them.’
So he started to walk as if he were them, talk as if he were them and did everything as if he was just them in every way. But a thing still bothered him. It was the shoes. He had trouble imaging he had leather shoes. For some reason, to be this better person, he had to have these leather shoes.
Every night he tried to imagine had a pair of leather shoes. He even clasped his hands together and prayed for them. Prayed that they would appear, pray they would arrive by his bed one morning or at the front door in a box.
And because of that he started looking forward to these leather shoes arriving. They had to arrive because he had asked for them ever so earnestly and persistently. They must arrive. He did everything he could to make them come. He helped his mother with every chore, helped his grandmother with her garden, helped his blind neighbour write his letters and was kind to every cat and every dog.
Until, finally, one day he woke up one morning and found a large box at the front door tied with a bow. He opened it and, to his astonishment, there was a pair of the most beautiful brown leather shoes. They shone with gloss and wonder. They were the most blessed things he had seen. Perfect in every way.
At the last minute when he was tying up his shoelaces and about to walk out of the house, he heard a voice behind him say, ‘Hey, Tom. Stop. Serving suggestion only.”
The little boy turned around, stunned.
‘What?’
‘I said, serving suggestion only.’
‘You mean?’
‘God can serve you anything, if you believe. You wanted the leather shoes and you got them. Whatever you want you can have, if you really believe. So what do you really want?’