Shame isn’t something you’re born with. It’s a heavy, ugly coat that someone else forces you to wear. I got mine when I was eight years old, in the checkout aisle of a Marketway in a small town in Ohio.

I remember it was hot, one of those sticky August afternoons. I loved going to the store with my mom. It was air-conditioned, and Mr. Gene, the older man with a kind, wrinkled face who collected the carts, always had a piece of hard candy in his pocket for me.

That day, I was wearing my favorite thing in the world: a faded red baseball cap that used to be my uncle’s. The brim was cracked, and I’d “fixed” it with a piece of silver duct tape. I thought it made me look like a big-leaguer.

I was pushing the cart, a serious job for an eight-year-old, when we passed the freezer section. There they were: a box of Choco-Fudge Crunch Bars. Six of them, covered in chocolate and nuts. I’d only ever seen them on TV commercials.

“Mom, can we? Please?” I didn’t just ask; I prayed.

I saw the map of our budget shift in her eyes. I saw the quick math, the worry, and then, the surrender. She sighed, a sound I knew well, but she smiled. “Okay, Davey. Just this once. Go on.”

I grabbed the box like it was a trophy.

We got to the checkout, aisle 4. Mom started putting our things on the belt: bread, milk, eggs, a big bag of potatoes, dried beans, peanut butter. The basics. I placed my ice cream bars on the belt last, like the grand finale.

My mom, looking tired under the fluorescent lights, pulled out her “coupon book.”

I didn’t know what it was. To me, it was just colorful paper, almost like play money, that magically bought us cereal and milk. I didn’t know the difference between that book and the green paper dad sometimes had in his wallet before he left.

The cashier, a young woman who looked bored, rang everything up. The total flashed on the little green screen.

My mom handed over her coupons. The cashier tore them out. Then, she looked back at the screen.

“That’s going to be $4.50 more,” she said flatly.

Mom’s face fell. She opened her wallet. I saw a single dollar bill and a few coins. She’d miscalculated. The ice cream bars weren’t covered by the coupons.

“Oh,” Mom whispered. “I… just one minute, let me see what to put back.”

She reached for the potatoes. They were the heaviest.

That’s when I heard the voice behind us.

“Maybe those should be the first to go.”

A woman, smelling like expensive perfume and rattling her car keys, pointed a long, painted fingernail at my box of ice cream.

“Seriously,” she said, not to us, but to the cashier, to the person behind her, to the whole world. “If you’re paying with my tax dollars, you don’t need to be buying fancy treats for your kid.”

My tax dollars.

The words hung in the air. The silence that followed was deafening. The man behind the lady stared at his shoes. The cashier suddenly got very busy wiping her counter.

My mom’s face turned a shade of red I’d never seen. She looked small, smaller than I ever thought she could be. She didn’t say a word. She just reached for the ice cream.

“No, I’ll get it,” I mumbled.

I picked up the box. It felt heavy, a thousand pounds. The smiling cartoon character on the front looked like he was mocking me. I walked the long walk of shame back to the freezer aisle, my duct-taped hat pulled low. I opened the glass door, the cold air hitting my hot face, and put the box back. It felt like I was burying a friend.

When I got back, the woman was paying for her groceries—a cart full of things I’d never seen, including a bottle of wine and a magazine with a smiling celebrity on the cover.

We left with our potatoes and our milk. My mom didn’t speak the whole walk home. When we got inside our small apartment, she went into her room and closed the door. I sat at the kitchen table, my baseball cap in my lap, and I finally understood.

The colorful paper wasn’t magic. It was different. It was something to be ashamed of.

That woman had given me the coat of shame, and I wore it for a long, long time.

But here’s the thing that woman, in her cloud of perfume, didn’t know.

That colorful paper—food stamps—filled my belly. It meant I could focus on my math homework instead of the empty, aching rumble in my stomach. It meant that when I went to school, I got the free breakfast and lunch that gave my brain the fuel to learn.

There were still times we didn’t have enough. I remember “ketchup soup”—hot water and ketchup packets I’d taken from a fast-food place. But because of that program, those hungry nights were the exception, not the rule.

I’m 45 now.

I own a small contracting business. We build homes. Good, solid homes for other families.

My wife and I have two daughters. Their biggest worry at the grocery store is deciding between strawberry or blueberry yogurt. They have never, not for one second, had to count pennies for milk.

My mom lives with us. I take her to the store now, and I tell her to get whatever she wants, including the most expensive ice cream in the freezer.

I pay a lot in taxes now. And I am proud that my money ensures kids like me get to eat.

I hear people talk a lot about “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” I guess I’m the guy who did it. I built a life and a business from nothing.

But Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

Those food stamps were my boots.

Right now, all over this country, people in expensive suits are debating whether families like mine deserve that little bit of help. They talk about budgets and deficits and “dependency.” They’re forgetting the faces. They’re forgetting what it feels like to be an 8-year-old kid in a baseball cap, putting a box of ice cream back in the freezer while strangers watch.

That assistance wasn’t a “handout.” It was a lifeline. It was the boot.

I am where I am today because of it. And I promise you, your doctor, your lawyer, your child’s teacher, the soldier who defends you, or the man who built your home… thousands of us are here because someone, somewhere, made sure we didn’t go to bed hungry.

Before you judge the person in line in front of you, remember my story. Remember that compassion isn’t a cost.

It’s an investment.