I once mentored an elementary school boy named Pete. Pete came from a very poor family. His father had left the family, and his Mother had no skills to earn anything more than minimum wage. I was watching a news channel this morning on the state of the economy. There was a woman being interviewed who had not worked for a year. Her prospects of finding a job are not looking good. She is running out of money and hope.
There is a classic book, The Grapes of Wrath. It is the saga of a family during the mid west dust bowl, and the great depression in the first third of the last century. The family lost almost everything due to the misfortune They traveled to California from camp to camp looking for field work. They were beaten down and plagued by bad luck throughout most of the book.
Another classic book along the same genre is, The Good Earth. The Good Earth is a story of a successful Chinese family whose fortune and fame take a terrible downturn. While the Grapes of Wrath took place over a few years, The Good earth was about decades of family struggle. The characters in both books are so downtrodden and beaten to the ground, one would think they should just lie down and die.
Lying down and dying from misfortune may work in the world of theatrics; in the real world life is not so generous. Being born is hard, so is dying. Between those two states there is no choice except to keep on living. Even if living is a daily struggle, there is no other option. Which brings me back to Pete and what he was doing post Halloween some years ago.
Pete, like almost any other kid went out and got his share of Halloween candy. This is where the likeness between Pete and other kids ended. Pete suddenly had some money when I met with him one week. Not a lot, maybe thirty-five cents. For Pete, that was more money than he had seen in several months. Curious, I asked Pete where he was getting money from.
Pete told me his Halloween candy was the source of his income. He had hidden his candy away for a few weeks, until most of the kids were out of candy. He took his stash out and started selling it to the other kids for anywhere from a penny to a nickel for each piece of candy. With that money Pete was buying more candy and little packets of lime flavored salt and reselling them for a few cents more than he paid. Pete soon planned to start selling juice drinks and perhaps candy bars if his customers could afford them.
I knew then that whether I was there or not, Pete was going to be alright in his life. One way or another Pete was going to be successful and find a way to beat the cycle of being poor. Pete has ‘Gumption’ as an old movie I can not even remember the name of talked about. Gumption made Pete a go getter and a small business man at the ripe old age of eight. I wish everyone whose life is falling apart could have met Pete. One or two hours with Pete, and they would see what a little ambition and creativity with a shot of gumption can do for someone.
