A Short Story
Clyde Morgan had beat the odds. The sixty-year-old was orphaned when he was nine and because of his parents having been killed in a plane crash. For six years young Clyde would be the resident of The Home Sweet Home orphanage, which was in his hometown of Southfield, Michigan. Though he had relatives who could have taken him in, no one wanted to take on the responsibility of raising a child that wasn’t their own. The aforementioned truth would be something Clyde would never forget, and, it would become the fuel to his fire of having his relatives regretting their decision.
At fifteen, a couple who had lost a son to cancer adopted Clyde. Their reason for the said adoption was because he reminded them of their son, and, they wanted to give him a chance to live life, their son was denied. And young Clyde took full advantage of his good fortune. He went through the public school system as if he had helped design it. He would graduate from high school with top honors. His performance would earn him a full-ride scholarship, which he would use to attend the prestigious Harvard University.
As he got older, Clyde only became more determined to make his relatives regret their decision for having left him in the orphanage. He would take advantage of all five of Harvard’s areas of study, which were: accounting management, management, marketing, strategy, and technology and operations management. In the University’s storied history, no student had ever displayed the level of commitment to learning as Clyde had. It was as if he lived to do nothing more.
By the age of thirty-five, Clyde owned multiple businesses and employed thousands of people. He was a firm believer in giving hand-ups and not handouts. He believed every person should earn what they received. His mentality, along with the fact that he still held a grudge against his family, left him unsympathetic to the misfortunes of others. Even with his adopted parents, he gave them nothing more than what he felt they deserved, seeing they only provided the opportunity for him to do what he did.
As Clyde and a business associate were exiting his favorite Southfield restaurant, he and a man collided with one another.
“Hey, why don’t you watch where you’re going,” Clyde said angrily.
“Can you spare some change, Sir?” the man asked humbly.
Clyde looked into the man’s smiling face, which displayed dirt smudges and a scraggly beard. He then allowed his eyes to scan the man who stood before him, and a look of disgust was on his face. The man’s clothes were tattered and dirty. It was plain to see he was going through a difficult time. Clyde’s eyes rested on the man’s white sneakers, which looked as if they had just been purchased. He thought to himself, how could everything else about this man display an undeniable sign of lack, but his sneakers were brand new.
“Can you spare so change, Sir?” the man asked again.
Clyde took his eyes off the man’s shoes and placed them back on his face, which still displayed his winning smile. “I don’t give handouts. But if you want to earn your keep, I can see that you’ll be able to get employment.”
“Oh, I’m unable to work Sir, back injury.”
“Sounds like a personal problem, buddy. Let’s go, Steve,” Clyde started walking towards his Mercedes Benz. His personal driver held open the back door for him.
“Here you are, Mister,” Steve tried handing the man a fifty-dollar bill.
“Thanks, but no thanks, Steve,” the man said kindly.
“Alrighty then. Hey, how do you know my name?”
“Clyde mentioned it.”
“Oh, oh yeah. Hey, how do you know his name?”
“Have a great day, Steve,” the man chirped, his winning smile reappeared.
A blank expression appeared on Steve’s face. He shrugged his shoulders and then walk toward Clyde’s vehicle.
The man watched as the vehicle in question pulled away from the curve and into traffic. “And so it begins,” he said aloud, he then walked off laughing.
Be sure to tune in for the stunning conclusion tomorrow.
Thank you for donating minutes of your precious time to acknowledge my offering. May all we deserve and desire flow abundantly into our lives like a river does into a sea.
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