Opportunity

On that faithful Friday, Josh on his usual sleeky blue jeans and ‘7 bright coloured stripped’ T-shirt, was walking down the walkway. He was so focused to his destination until something caught his attention. It was a raggedy looking old man clearly in his seventies obvious by the reason of the grey colour of his hairs, walking down the walkway in the opposite direction barefooted. He didn’t understand what the situation was for the man even when it was obvious to him that the day was sunny, that most ladies especially those carrying their child held their umbrellas wide opened as they walked.

Quickly, he reminded himself of what was going on in his heart before the distraction. He hurriedly continued, but after 3 minutes approximate he crashed on a dustbin on the walkway and fell, his left shoe fell off his foot and his sole touched the floor. Immediately he shouted, because he felt the hotness of the floor. For about a minute, people stood watching the drama as instead of getting up he was lost in his thought. Out of pity a young man approached to help him up incase if there was an injury that he couldn’t stand.

As he got closer to Josh, Josh wore his shoe, got up and ran off, people were amazed and couldn’t fathom what went wrong. Some thought he was scared of the young man approaching him while others thought he was sick in the head. As they were in their thought, Josh was on his. Running to the direction of the old man he was thinking how the old man managed to walk barefooted in that hot afternoon. Even as he was searching for the old man, he didn’t calculate what was going to happen if he finds the old man.

After running for several minutes, he sat down on a seat beside the walkway to rest. Sweating and smelling beside him was the old man with his feet on the bench obviously the floor was so hot the he couldn’t bear it any longer. So happy with a sense of relief, he started thinking of what he intended to do when he went after the old man at the first place. To his surprise there was nothing in his mind that he became confused. Then he realized there was no other option than to pull the shoes.

Stretching his hands from a distance to offer the shoes and as the old sighted the shoe he shouted; ‘give me my shoe, you crook, vagabond!’ The old was so loud that he attracted the attention of passersby. On leaving the scene barefooted and as the old man left wearing his shoes, Josh was so embarrassed as it was written in people’s face, ‘look at him, thief’.

Meanwhile a man waiting for taxi at a corner was carefully observing what was happening and the disappointment in Josh’s face. He dropped his briefcase and waved at Josh. Josh wanted to run but knowing he did nothing wrong summoned courage and went to meet the man. In a short while Josh narrated his ordeal to the man. The man was surprise that a young man of this present generation can have such compassion on someone talk more of an old man. Josh narrated to him also how he had missed his appointment and final opportunity of registering for an academic scholarship.

The man so sorry about what happened took him to nearby boutique, bought him a brand new pair of shoe. On leaving Josh to enter a taxi, he gave Josh his card. Josh left the premises thinking what he would do with the card and the reason it was given to him because he said nothing to him as he gave him the card.

To Josh’s surprise he had written and signed something behind the card which said, ‘see me in my office on Monday’. Still amazed by his observations, he got a shocker that the man is a director at the office he was going to earlier.

Please do share your lesson(s) learnt from the story. Thanks for reading through.

By J_amaze.