My Shoes Which Were One-Size Too Big, Memories of the Childhood Years

The hard times of your younger years, translated…

Until when I went into technical high school, every time my mother would want to make an article of clothing for me or buy me shoes, she’d always made it or buy it a size too big.  Keeping track of every penny spent, she’d always managed to spend money on JUST the right things.

When my mother was younger, she’d apprenticed as a seamstress, and, my and my younger brother’s clothes, they’re mostly hand-me-downs from our older cousins, or that they were made from the spare pieces from the clothes that my mother made for her clients.

In order for those clothes to last longer, naturally, she’d made them not fitted to our current sizes, she’d usually made them one size too big, and, when we put them on, we look like traditional Taiwanese opera actors.

She couldn’t make the shoes herself, and so, we’d gone to the stores, and, children’s feet grow real fast, and, my mother would often ask the shop owners to bring us shoes that were bigger than our current sizes.  Back then, I didn’t have a sense of fashion and just gone along with what the adults told me; plus, we were living just above the poverty lines, there are only little wishes that we, children have, felt that it was so amazing, that our parents would take us shoe shopping, we really didn’t care if the shoes were too big, or if it would be embarrassing for us to wear them, so long as they fit our feet, and if it’s really too huge, we’d stuffed some paper into them.

When I wore my one-size-too-big shirt and shoes to school, I could always see, from the corner of my eyes, my classmates gossiping about me, trying to hide their making fun of me.  At first, I’d started feeling hurt, didn’t know how to deal or cope with this sort of a treatment from my classmates, and, when I’d gone home, I couldn’t possibly blame my mother for wanting to save money, and so, I’d kept all of those bad feelings bottled up inside, feeling sad about it, but, nobody knows about it, nobody can console me.

When I went into technical high school, there were male classmates who’d made fun of my shoe size, asked if I’d planned to stay for four years before I graduate.  I’d returned their inquiries with my silence, gladly though, I’d made good grades, and, all the gossips dissipated, with my good grades.

I think, not being very tall, but, I do have large feet, this, is probably due to how I had been wearing shoes one size too big since I was growing up, so my feet can grow, as big as they wanted to, I suppose.

So, this is the memories of your younger years, you were not very well off, and, in order to save money, your mother would buy you clothes that were bigger, so they’d last longer, and, you’d gotten made fun of by others, but, you KNEW that your mother did the best she could, to provide for you, and that, was more than enough for you, wasn’t it?