Think & Write #40

A Second Chance

I looked at all the people around me.  I was overjoyed.  How did I end up here?

It’s not that I hate the new position that I have.  It’s just that I’m not used to having all this attention.  This will definitely take some getting used to, since it all happened so fast.

About two months ago, I was homeless.  I was living on the streets holding up a sign.  This sign was the only thing I had.  My only means of begging for for food.

On that day, instead of food or money, someone gave me something more than that.  It was a finely dressed man who had some kind of sign-up sheet.

He just came up to me and asked, “would you like a job?”  Just like that.  Why would he ask anyone like me?  I smelled terrible and don’t have any skills whatsoever.

I told the man this, but it didn’t matter to him.  He decided to give me a job as a janitor.  A business was looking for a janitor to sweep their floors and he signed me up for it.

Futhermore, the man wanted to buy me lunch.  I didn’t understand this either.  Why would he even care to do this?  Was he trying to prove anything?  I asked him this and he simply said that God loved me.  Why would he?  I got dealt the worst possible hand living on the street!

After the lunch, the man gave me some money.  A few days later, he came back with some clothes.  I then went to a place that had a shower, and I cleaned up.  I then had an interview.  There were several questions.  I didn’t know the answers to all of them, but they gave me the job anyway.

A day later, I started as janitor.  As I swept those floors.  I started talking.  What did I talk about?  Ideas.  I always had these crazy ideas in my head.  Whether it was an invention, or just sounded like a good idea,  I just started talking about it.  I typically did this when I was all alone, and no one was around.  One night, when I was mentioning these ideas, someone heard them.  It happened to be that same finely dressed man that I met earlier.  Upon hearing my crazy ideas, he mentioned another job that I might be good at doing, and that I will be considered for that job.

Big deal, I thought.  These are just a bunch of crazy ideas.  What would he want with them?  About a week later, I was given another interview.  At the interview, all they wanted to hear were my crazy ideas.  With that, I shrugged my shoulders and told them.  They were amazed and gave me a new job right away.  I didn’t understand this.  What did they want with my ideas?  Maybe they were useful after all.

That same night, the finely dressed man invited me to his apartment.  It was really fancy, and had several rooms.  It smelled a lot nicer than the alley.  For my new job, he showed me this thing called a computer.  The fold-out thing that he showed me was a laptop.  Now it was frustrating for me to learn this, but I seemed to pick it up pretty fast.

A few days later, I started my new job.  I started writing all kinds of ideas in my laptop.

That brings us to today.  I am still getting used to all the new changes that have happened in my life.  I may have screwed up in the past, but now, I guess I can say that I was given a second chance.

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©2012  K. L. Walker