While I was in school, my mother had a stroke. I was in the ninth grade, planning to stay until the eleventh, but after such a disaster I somehow immediately decided that I had to leave after the ninth, rather get a profession and go to work. Of course, I wanted something bigger and better, but I ended up getting a job as a cook. In my course there were mostly guys with me who did poorly in school subjects, so I was one of the best, always at the top of the list and on scholarship, and this did not even prevent me from working part-time in the cafe in the kitchen.
When my sophomore year we had a mandatory internship and I was assigned to the school cafeteria, I had to quit the cafeteria. But I managed to work in the school, getting even a pittance, but at least something.
My mother didn’t like it. She herself could hardly walk, had a disability, and with her pension and my salary was still nothing before, but with a job at the school has become several times worse. And that’s when she started encouraging me to carry food home from there.
– No one would notice if you took the pies away at the end of the day. They’ll throw them away anyway,” she said.
She also asked me to take the patties, even though it was customary to feed homeless animals. And I had to lie that I was taking it to the cats, but I had to take it home myself. I felt very bad about it, but my mother’s attitude towards me at the sight of some school food and a freezer full of it, got better.
That’s how we lived for years. I took everything from the kitchens I worked in, and even if I got caught doing it, no one scolded me, coming into my position and feeling sorry for me. It was even more annoying than not being able to get a job somewhere normal. But my mother stood her ground and encouraged me to carry everything home.
It was only now that I exhaled calmly and stopped doing it-mom was gone. Her apartment was left to me, my salary is now also mine alone, and I finally have a girlfriend! But the best part of it all is that I no longer have the need to pick up leftovers from the kitchen. And I’m ashamed to admit to anyone that I’ve been doing that for years, but still…I guess that’s what you have to do sometimes. And I wasn’t the only one who tried to bring something home from the kitchen, especially when I knew it was going to get thrown out. Hard times call for shameful things like that. But it’s a good thing they’re over for me. I hope to never eat that way again, and to be the kind of person who can go to the cafeteria and buy myself whatever I want.
