By Rhino Times reader Austin Morris

I was faffing about today, examining the shoe selection at Reidsville’s Wal-Mart, wondering if I should eschew my usual $120 boots for a more affordable option, when around the corner suddenly came a waist height object that drew my eyes. A young boy in a child’s wheelchair, staring up at me with a beautiful blue-eyed smile. “Hello!” I said. “Hi” came the cheerful response. Fair haired and freckled, an open and innocent face, around nine or ten years old, greeting a complete stranger with a ray of sunlight. His skinny little legs seemed bound together somehow, but he disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. What a wonderful attitude for a boy with such a crippling disability, I thought.

He was accompanied by an elderly couple, the woman suddenly screaming that she “would call them right now!”, whoever “they” were. Perhaps he had strayed away when he shouldn’t have, or committed some other malfeasance. To me, he seemed not to have done anything wrong.
Maybe his Gran was having a bad day, It was none of my business anyway. I thought nothing more of it, save for a pang of sadness for the poor lad.
But approaching the checkouts ten minutes later their party arrived as I did, and the boy was crying. Not demonstratively, not ostentatiously. No histrionics at all. He was just wheeling himself along, his Grandfather stone-faced, his Grandmother with a scowl that seemed permanent judging by her haggard face. He was just weeping. Nobody noticed as his tears silently rolled down his cheeks. But I noticed.
It cut me to the quick. What had this boy ever done to deserve being crippled, when he should be running and playing, and climbing trees, and playing soccer, and racing his buddies to the bus line? Boisterous and boasting, as boys should be. Effervescent with joie de vivre, and full of life. Worse still, why was he scorned and belittled by people who were presumably his family?
He had prevailed with an optimism that I could not have mustered, as he cheered complete strangers with his warmth. He is a better man than I am.
As if his physical predicament were not devastating enough, it seemed he had to deal with a mean and cruel family, if they were his family at all.
I should not have intervened, but his clear distress moved me. Perhaps it was because he looked like me when I was a boy. But I was not dealt such a poor hand. I was lucky. He was not. I just said to him “It’ll be alright – in the end”.
The old people glared. He looked up through his tears, no longer smiling.
Nothing else was said.
I paid and left, but I confess that as I walked out of that store, that brave beautiful lad was not the only one whose eyes were wet.
I counted my blessings as I drove home.
And I wept for that boy.
Austin Morris

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