It was a dark and stormy night for ol’ George Abofo. He was peddling his wares down on Lipman Street, just a hair shy from Bottomsville. Abofo was a sly fellow who made his living selling shoes to children on the side of the road.

Abofo was a shoesman. Some people use the phrase cobbler, but Abofo didn’t.

Abofo wasn’t like most people, and he didn’t give a rat’s ass who knew it.

This particular night Abofo was lacing a pair of brown boots for Robert Feed, a local middle schooler whose feet were growing at an alarming rate. It seemed like every week Feed needed a new pair. Abofo loved the challenge, and more importantly, loved that Feed was a young student.

You see, George Abofo didn’t even know how to read. But if shoes were books, and laces were words, then goddamnit, Abofo was the most literate man you’d ever met.

“Mr. Abofo, my shoes is too small for my feets!” Feed exclaimed. The wind whipped Abofo’s face as he labored over Feed’s shoes. “Just a moment now, Robert.” Abofo pulled and prodded the end of Feed’s left boot, adjusting the shoe’s vamp with his tongue. That was the thing about being a shoesman—you sometimes had to use your tongue to get things done.

“Examine my work,” said Mr. Abofo, standing up off of his shoesman’s stoop. Feed looked down at his boots and gasped. They fit perfectly. Mr. Abofo brushed off his hands (like a father would after a long day of gardening) and smiled. “Alright kiddo, let’s get you off to school,” he said, chuckling. Robert Feed skipped away smiling, his toes wiggling within the perfectly spaced confines of his boots, not realizing how dangerously close he had come to being brutally molested by the town pervert.