There’s a young boy, about fifteen, with multiple mental deficiencies caused by a severe automobile accident when he was young.  Although physically capable and reasonably athletic, he speaks with a lisp and can only read, count and tell time with difficulty.  He is on constant medication which he takes twice a day.

More disturbing however, is the way he comes to school each day: dirty, disheveled, unkempt.  He carries himself in that dazed, somnambulant way of the half-asleep and his skin was the chalky grey of the chronically unwashed.  His homework is seldom done and correspondence from the teacher appears either unread or unconsidered.  It’s not clear exactly who he lives with, but he is cared for by an extended family of aunts, uncles and grandparents.

There is a vacant sadness about him.

This week in gym class, he kept stopping during footraces on the gym floor.  He would pull up short in frustration, complaining that his toes were slipping out of his shoes when he went around corners.  When I asked to see his shoes, I was shocked to find an almost 4” hole in the sole of his sneaker – practically the entire front half of the bottom of the shoe worn completely through.  His bare toes clung to the inside edges of the sole like a cat caught between branches.  The bottom of his bare foot was completely exposed.

“Don’t you have any other shoes you can wear?” I asked.

“Only my waders,”  he said, “and I can’t wear those to school.”

(He’s an avid fisherman: he fishes in the river for catfish and carp.  I think it gets him out of the house.)

“Well can’t you wear a pair of socks to keep your toes in?”

“I don’t have any socks.”

And come to think of it, I had never seen him wearing socks.

Word spread quickly and the various teachers and caregivers got together and came up with a couple pairs of hand-me-down sneakers in his size – outgrown by brothers and sons.  A couple of us volunteered to just buy him new shoes but apparently the laws involved don’t make it quite that simple.  Letters must be written home and social services must be contacted. 

A fifteen year-old boy has been walking to school through the raw October rain with bottomless sneakers.  Maybe it’s because he’s a disabled kid with multiple disabilities who’s bussed in to a rich, suburban district from an old  town down along the river.  Maybe it’s because those who are supposed to be tending to his basic needs – his family - are ignoring him.  Maybe it’s just because we can’t check every pair of shoes on every kid in every school.

Yet he’s one of the more fortunate ones because within the next twenty-four hours, he’ll have reliable shoes… even if the shoe fairy has to pay a clandestine visit.  Meanwhile, tomorrow, next week, and all through the school year, other kids will still be going to school without soles on their shoes, food in their bellies or even the slightest word of encouragement.

Of course I realize the realities.  But it still makes me sad.