One day Umberto and Enrique call me over in the park. They told me that someone had stolen their box with shoe shine stuff, and that I had to give them the money to buy new brushes, ...
I said: "Have I ever given you money?" The reason why I never gave money is simple: they need pills for their head ache, but they go and buy a jar of glue. Sniffing the glue makes them forget about their hunger, about their sad life. It's a cheap way, money wise, to escape from reality. It costs them dearly mentally. It literally eats away their brain.
So I told them that I would see what I could do for them. Walking over to the market, I asked them all kinds of questions. They needed 2 round brushes to put the shoe paste on the shoes, two longer brushes to shine the shoes afterward, and two tins of shoe shine paste.
When we got to the stand on the market, I ordered 1 of each brushes and both tins of paste.
They complained! I told them: "Listen guys... walking over here I asked you: if ten people come to have their shoes shined. How many have brown shoes, how many have black shoes?
You guys told me 8 people had black shoes. So here is what you'll do tomorrow: you only shine black shoes. with the money you earn, you go to the market and buy your own pair of missing brushes.
Protest!
I told them: Well I don't HAVE to buy anything. You should be glad that I buy you these things, instead of complaining that it's not enough. If you hadn't been sniffing glue yesterday, I'm sure you would have noticed that somebody was taking your box from under your head while you were asleep! I said: You guys are business men! You have to learn how to take care of yourselves, instead of counting on other people.
A couple of days later Umberto runs up to me in the park calling my name. "Juan Carlos, Juan Carlos, LOOK! We have all four brushes now. We bought them ourselves."
They looked ever so proud of themselves. And I was proud of them!
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