Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Once upon a time, there was a huge gumboot that was as tall as a boy. Or was the boy just short, nobody will ever know. The boy had known the gumboot all his life, it had been loved and used for all special occasions by his father. This was no ordinary gumboot. It was purely made of rubber, sure – but it was the most graceful and stylish gumboot ever known for man to wear. What was even more special about this gumboot was that there was no other like it, anywhere in the world. In fact there was only one. Every day when the boy’s father would wear the gumboot, he would wear a different shoe on his other foot. The most surprising fact was that over years of wearing the boot everyday, the gumboot did not wear. As time passed, all of the other shoes would wear down and need to be thrown out and replaced. But not the gumboot. The story behind the stylish and hardy gumboot was a mystery to all. One day, when the boy had become as tall as the gumboot and began to throw curiosity at the world, he asked his father why there was only one gumboot. His father replied that he did not know. Because of that, the boy developed an unbending curiosity about the boot. As he grew older and never encountered another like it, his curiosity became obsession. What really drove this obsession was the mystery of it all – the fact that nobody, his father included, knew anything of its origin story. To not know the origin of something struck the boy as quite peculiar. Everything else he had come across appeared to have an origin story. He knew where each of his own shoes had come from and when he got them. And because of that, he felt that the gumboot should also have an origin story. He felt there had to be an origin story out there for the gumboot, even though nobody seemed to know what it was. He desperately wanted to know. It riled him that something he had come to feel so connected with, had no understanding of its own place in his world. He believed that having a story for something gave it life and purpose, and that the gumboot was missing out. This drove him mad, until one day it dawned on him what it really meant to have a story. He realised that there were many ways to have a story and there didn’t have to be just one. In fact, the gumboot did have a story. It had his story for the gumboot. The story followed the tale of how the gumboot came to be in his life. It followed what it was about the gumboot that made it different to other gumboots, and to shoes in general. He realised that the story of the gumboot is like a truth for it, and that it was okay to create the story based on his relationship with the gumboot, to give it an origin story. He considered what he knew about the gumboot – how it came into his life, and what purpose it played. He thought of all the memories he shared with the gumboot. He remembered filling it with water & putting plants in it. He remembered his father whacking a thief over the head with it when he tried to steal his father’s car. The gumboot’s story had life and grew. It taught him many things. Most of all, he learnt about story and how it gave a home to things in his life.