By Johnny Coomansingh
It suddenly dawned on me that it was Shakespeare who said: “To be or not to be.” So many times, I was almost ‘shoeless’ or in want of a decent pair of footwear as a student at Northeastern College (NEC). All my colleagues could have seen my level of decrepitude. I faced the reality that my fellow students would see that I was nearing the point where my feet would be quite bare, for many at my feet did stare. Sometimes the question would rise up in my mind whether I should ‘be or not be’ as a student of NEC in Sangre Grande, Trinidad.
The mere comfort of having a nice pair of shoes was not to be for me. My mind would oftentimes veer away from my studies as I internally fought with my decrepit condition. Then one day, I visited my Grenadian great aunt. Immediately, I espied a pair of shoes in the corner of her half-lit room. The room was gloomy, but that laceless pair, covered with dust, became mine for the following school term. With a sigh and a glint in her eye, my aged aunt was very happy to gift me her shoes. She was willing to wave her rubber shoes goodbye, so I did not have to go to the Bata shoe store. I did not mind wearing them, complemented with ‘battery socks,’ yes, socks that kept running down. These shoes were not made of leather. They were, as Trini people would say, ‘spit and shine.’ With a wet rag, the dust was gone and O what a shine.
The school term began. I did not strut around, but I was proud to have a ‘new’ pair of shoes. Walking home on evenings was a trial. The all rubber shoes were not too comfortable. In the blazing Sun at around three o’clock in the afternoon, my feet ‘caught’ fire! What a burn! I could not wait to get to the standpipe located on the Ojoe Road hill just before the Sangre Grande hospital. Without hesitation, I would drench my feet for a squelching comfort to continue walking the next half-of-a-mile accompanied with watery music emitting from my shoes.
After a couple of weeks, the eyelets popped. Of course, the eyelets were made of rubber, and they could not stretch forever. Apparently, my feet were getting bigger. This was mental torment because the laces had nowhere to anchor themselves. Suddenly, I became a quasi-shoe repairer. My ingenuity at that early stage saw me with ‘cutlass’ binding wire to fix a spot on the rubber to stabilise my laces. Not long after that ordeal, the shoes and I parted ways.
My mother, in her penury, always gave me hope and comfort that “God will provide.” And as ‘God make day,’ there was a knock on the old wooden door. Her uncle arrived from New York and gave her a box. In that box was a pair of brown suede shoes. I don’t know from what store he purchased that pair, or if somebody threw them out, and he was lucky to snap them up. They looked like a pair of shoes that someone would wear in a Shakespearean medieval play, a 16th century opera or what ‘Bobby Shaftoe’ would wear with ‘silver buckles’ on his knee. Mom with a certain look in her eyes, and without saying a word, I could hear her saying, “… those shoes are yours.” I couldn’t retort. They were big and bulky, too big! “Stuff them with newspaper,” she said. It is quite likely that even my toes learnt to read the headlines.
The school’s colour code required black shoes. Not so happy about these shoes, I had no choice but to dye them black. The black dye left in some places a little unsightly shine on the nap. Wearing these shoes made me feel like a character, a cartoon, a creation from ‘Dr Seuss’ himself. Instead of laces, there was a flap and a metal fixture that sounded ‘clack’ when shut around my instep. They were long, ugly, ungainly and floppy. My feet arrived at the place faster than my face. What a travesty!
Then there were the ‘pretty’ girls who teased me at my wonderful high school, where the motto was: The Pleasant Seat of Sweet Learning. To them, I was “Puss in boots.” I couldn’t run away from the embarrassment. They made fun of me with their sneers and jeers. No one heard my voice. Their laughter and the pointing finger created in me the need to be ‘far from the madding crowd.’ I couldn’t hide. I just had to abide and carry on up the jungle of insensitivity and lack of compassion. No one cared to understand what I was going through. Sometimes I wished that my feet were invisible. However, Matshona Dhliwayo said: “Pain teaches you more than pleasure. Failure teaches you more than success. Poverty teaches you more than prosperity. Adversity teaches you more than comfort.”
Life was hard, and I struggled during my high school days and thought about leaving the school at least four times. Nevertheless, the summer vacation came around, and our school went into a building expansion project. I asked for a job as a mason helper and was hired. This part-time work provided me with the opportunity to learn how to mix mortar, put up profiles, tie blocks into columns, point blocks, and all the processes involved with terrazzo work. The evidence of my pointing skills could still be seen on the panels of vent blocks at the school. I was paid TT$ 6:00 per day, and at the end of 13 days I received TT$ 78:00, enough to buy a new pair of trousers, white shirts, merinos, and a really nice pair of black leather shoes.
Suddenly, there was no more teasing and harassment from anyone. In fact, I received compliments. The pretty girls, who were, as they say today, ‘stush,’ kept their distance. This was my last year before I took my Cambridge University General Certificate of Education at the ordinary level (O’level). I did eight subjects: English language, mathematics (algebra, arithmetic, geometry), biology, chemistry, agricultural science, health science, art and woodwork.
Finding my way in life was difficult, but I guess that different people have different trials. My trials in high school were tagged to my shoes and other problems associated with poverty. It is probably why I started wearing Clarks shoes as the best shoes for my feet. I will not change. They fit well, last long and are repairable. Not to give free advertisement, but I am of the belief that my feet were made for Clarks. At one point in my life, I used to hang out with a shoemaker, and he taught me how to build a leather shoe similar to that of a Clarks shoe. I wore the shoe for 12 years and then gave it to my nephew, who ‘destroyed’ it three years.
If the experience written here could inspire someone, then “… my living would not be in vain.” Despite the pressures that life throws at us, I suggest that we keep fervently and earnestly pressing on. If someone could find hope in what I wrote, then I would not have failed in telling this little part of my story. Getting discouraged and giving up is not the answer, and “Nothing succeeds like success.” The Bible says: “Weeping endures for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
I close with a statement I learnt in primary school: “The darkest watch of night is the one before the dawn, but relief is often nearest when we least expect it.”
