Arantxa Rodriguez
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

The Shoes From My Window

There aren’t many trees, all I see are tall buildings, some disappearing into the lima grey clouds and others close enough to see people standing on the roofs. There are also large crowds of people speaking loudly creating a rumble like that of a pack of animals. They each talking to each other or staring at their phones walking like robots. They all have their own lives and are all thinking and doing different things at that moment. I try to put myself in their shoes, think like they’re thinking and pretend like I’m them right then. Now I guess this might sound weird to you, like why would I put myself in someone else’s shoes, why not just focus on myself? My answer is that it’s easier to understand others when I try and see life through their eyes. This can be very rewarding because even though that person might be having a bad day, my imagination allows me to turn that around although it may be harder for me to do it in real life. It’s also fun to escape reality for a bit and pretend to be someone else if only for just a second.

There is a man walking down the street, phone in hand, smiling. He’s short, tan and is wearing a fancy tux. He’s texting rapidly, and I’d imagined him texting his wife saying the best thing just happened to him at work and that he’s getting a promotion. His wife gets so excited and decided to grab their most expensive bottle of wine to celebrate. He quickly calls a cab and speeds home to find her anxiously waiting for him at the door. He runs up to her, and they hug to later sit down and talk about his day as they sip and cheer for the big occasion. They talk about starting a family and moving to a lovely big house as they laugh and smile ready for what is to come.

A child is walking in between the cars on the road. His clothes are brown with dust and full of small holes ripped over time. He wears a large frown on his face and repeats the same sentence over and over and over: “one sol, one sol”. He knocks on the windows with his left hand and points to the cheap yellow candies shaped like small lemons he’s holding with his right hand. He can hear the sound of his stomach growling from the strong scent of the small candy but knows he can’t have any because his family needs the money. He works hard to convince people to buy his candy but is often ignored. He looks up to the back window of a big grey van and watches how two kids throw around the cereal their nanny gave them and wished he had that. At that moment he notices the window from the van begins to roll down and one of the kids from the car sticks out his hand and places some of the cereal into the child’s hands as he smiled uncontrollably. That was the first time he’d ever tried colorful cereal, and he loved it.

She pumps the gas while she watches the woman in the driver’s seat gulp down a bottle of water. She’s been standing outside all day and is sweating from the heat, It’d been colder out in the morning, but the sun came out since and she won’t be able to get out of her big baggy uniform until the end of her shift. She wishes she could go home to her sister where she can rest far away from the real world, but there she is making money and looking forward to having a day like the woman in the car someday. She’s thankful for the tip the lady in the car gave her and begins to think of all the wonderful things she would buy with it. She’s saving up her money to buy her younger sister a beautiful necklace, one she can afford of course. She is the only one who cared for her and wants to give her as much of a normal childhood as possible. Later that night when her sister received the necklace, she smiled as big and bright as the moon during the cold night and gave her sister a warm hug.

Then there’s me a simple teenager looking out from my window at all these people disappear into the traffic, one story after the other, with the small trees and the tall buildings. Sometimes I feel bad for them because the situations I imagine for them aren’t always true and they could be having a really bad day, but I like to stay positive. Not to be cliche, but the reason why I twist these stories up from bad to good, is because not all things that take a bad front are necessarily bad. Like the story of the kid, he is pictured as someone sad and poor but experiences a happy moment during his day. This way I know that if I'm ever having a bad day there are people who have it worse who get past it and if they can then I can most certainly get over something as simple as one bad day.

    Arantxa Rodriguez

    Written by

    I write about my mental objects

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