Me and My Cowboy Boots!

I'm thirteen tall and skinny and I had a job. My mum didn't like me working but I said that it would be okay. Everybody delivers newspapers at my age and I was just doing the same and I got the job for the morning run for the newsagents around the corner.

I used to get up at 5.3am to be at the shop at six! I would pick up the newspapers and deliver them, and once I new the houses and route I was done and dusted by 6.45. Time for breakfast and school! But last week after a year working for the 'fat man' I was kicked out, told to scram by an angry newsagent and now I don't have those four pounds that they paid me. Dad said that he would pay me to stop whining but I don't think he will. Mum is being all nice and says I can always get another job.

None of it was my fault; I was just doing my job but the 'fat man' was always shouting and was always so grumpy. I don't think he liked getting up in the morning. I think he just didn't understand me or didn't have any children or something like that. At the beginning he was okay but I after the first morning that I was late he started to act strangely and shout a lot. My mum had bought me these trousers you see, but she always gets them too big - drain pipes are in fashion mum, not flares. I did them up myself, used the sewing machine to make the legs thinner but I must have taken too much off as later that day my knees all swelled up and I couldn't walk properly. So it wasn't my fault that the next morning I was late, could hardly walk to the door never mind the shop. I suppose because I left all the papers in the stairwells instead of them going upstairs didn't make him any happier, but how was I supposed to climb stairs with my sore knees. That was my entire mums fault for getting me the trousers too big. I spent all the next day undoing the stitches on my trousers and doing them properly, I must have let about a centimeter out and now they are perfect.

I always wanted cowboy boots. They were just something that I had to have but my mum just didn't want to buy me any. I suppose if I had saved myself enough money with the paper round I would have bought myself a proper pair but somehow life got in the way of my plans. I was walking past the shop, you see, when I saw this smashing pair of light leather tanned cowboy boots - they were only fourteen pounds. And they looked great. I went in and tried them on and all that, tried them on for a whole week until the assistant told me that I was 'wearing them thin comin' in every day'. I had fourteen pounds but there was always one problem in my mind. One boot was slightly darker than the other boot.

I went silent for that week, spent hours at my calculator and still more counting the coins in my cowboy boot savings box until that Saturday I decided to take the plunge; I was going to buy myself those boots. I had to hide them from my mum, so in the morning when I was going for my paper round I used to hide them in my rucksack and then change into them when around the corner from the house and then do the same thing but backwards when I came back home. They were great and I used to walk fantastic in them.

But nobody else liked them. I suppose I did make a lot of noise in the stairwells of the flats as I ran up them two at a time - at 5.30 in the morning, but I don't think they should have complained to the 'fat man'! A few people who I didn't even deliver newspapers too came out and complained as well. Miserable people! I tried after that to climb the stairs quietly but it is very difficult to do that with cowboy boots with three inch heels on them. Sometimes I had to take them off and climb the stairs in my socks.

My mum found out because the newsagent told her.

My mum told me that I looked stupid in these boots. She said that I was far too tall for something like that and that my drainpipe trousers that she had spent a lot of money on looked daft tucked into them. I think she was just angry because I had bought the boots and not told her. It was my money mum! She told me not to wear them again.

I thought about this allot. I could not wear my boots outside; I could not wear them inside! I somehow decided that if I made them smaller then my mum would not be so unhappy and maybe she would let me wear them again. I snuck down to the garage and used my dad's hacksaw to chop some of the heel off but I seemed to keep on getting the sizes different. By the time I managed to get them even there was not much heel left on those different colored boots. Anyway, as an experiment and to see how they would feel I sneaked them out for a test run. I put them on around the corner and nearly fell over when I stood up. I sort of felt that I was constantly walking up a hill with a lead weight swinging from the back of my neck. Believe me; it is very difficult to walk in a pair of cowboy boots with most of the heel missing.

Anyway when I arrived at the newsagent he laughed for the first time in ages. He must have been in a good mood, although he was nearly on the floor choking when I left with the papers.

I found out that day that it is nearly impossible to walk quickly with irregular boots and that it is very impossible to climb stairs with them like that. I was in a hurry that day; I was already late as I could not walk quickly and because I had to do so much sneaking around. I often leave the newspapers at the bottom when I run up all the stairs to the top, nobody will steal them. But for some reason I was not thinking properly and I left today's pile on a wall outside. Took me a while longer to get to the top, took me even longer to get to the bottom and by the time I got outside all the remaining newspapers had disappeared.

I thought somebody was playing a joke but there was nobody there. I left the entrance and looked down the long street to the bottom and there I found my newspapers. I think the wind was a bit strong that day and now all my papers were in separate pages having conversations with the chimneys up top. I could also see the 'fat man' running around and clutching a pile of loose sheets in his arms and he looked a bit red in the face. Must have been the most exercise he had had in a month. He fired me that same day. Told me to get out of his shop and that I would not be welcome back.

I hung up my boots that day.

I've just got a job delivering milk now. It is for the milk shop around the corner but I have to get up at four thirty ever morning. It's okay though and I am not wearing my boots anymore. The milkman is not very happy though because yesterday the milk trolley ran down the hill by itself. It's only a little cart and there must have been something wrong with the wheels as it ended up right at the bottom of the road and in the canal. Lost twenty six pints that day and he told me that it would come out of my wages!

I look at those boots every so often, I still like them. I just wish I had kept those heels, could have glued them back on.