Act of Kindness Story Contest - Ebba C. - 12/26/18

Contest: Winners

Act of Kindness Story Contest

Submitted by: Ebba C., age 12, Herndon, VA

Shining Shoes

A frayed cloth. A bottle of flaxseed oil. A foldable chair. Unlike my friends who carried a backpack to school, I carried these to the military base in Busan. I was fifteen and I was a shoe shiner. As the sole provider for my family, I set out to work every day.

On a good day, I had seven customers. My customers gave me chocolate and powdered milk. At the market I would trade these for rice and vegetables for my family. I could have survived with this, but no one treated me kindly except for John. Sergeant Wilson, to be exact. Unlike others who didn’t look at me, John looked at me with a kind tint in his eyes. At the end of the shoe shining every day, he would shake my hand and thank me for my hard work. I shined John’s shoes brighter than anyone else’s. We were like family for each other.

One day, John gave me a page out of a newspaper. He wanted me to learn English.

After long nights of studying, I could read the whole newspaper page. The following week, John left. I was determined to speak English with John in the future.

I started school a month later. I started as the dumbest in class and graduated the smartest. I went to college in Seoul and came back to Busan years later and became an English teacher. Through the Revisit Korea Program by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, I volunteered every time veterans came to Korea, hoping to meet John. Each time, John never came.

During my service on the 6.25 Korean War Memorial Day, I saw a man resembling John. “Excuse me, sir,” I said. He turned around. “John?”

We gasped. “Yeong-sik?” Both of us had changed, at least on the outside.

“I’m an English teacher now,” I said.

“Wow,” he merely replied.

I dropped down to my knees and pulled out my handkerchief.

“No . . . ,” he began.

“Yes.” I scrubbed John’s shoes shinier than anything else, like always.

“Thank you.”


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