A Disaster Makes a Strong Person

I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off a box car in a freight yard in Atlantic City and landing on my head. Now I am thirty-two. I can vaguely remember the brightness of sunshine and what red color is. It would be wonderful to see again, but a disaster can do strange things to people.

It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do if I hadn’t been blind. I believe in life now. I am not so sure that I would have believed in it so deeply, otherwise. I don’t mean that I would prefer to go without my eyes. I simply mean that the loss of them made me appreciate the more what I had left.

Life, I believe, asks a continuous series of adjustments to reality. The more readily a person is able to make these adjustments, the more meaningful his own world becomes. The adjustment is never easy. I was confused and afraid. But I was lucky. My parents and my teachers saw something in me —a potential to live, you might call it —which I didn’t see, and they made me want to fight it out with blindness.

The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. That was basic. If I hadn’t been able to do that, I would have broken down and become a chair rocker on the front porch for the rest of my life. When I say belief in myself I am not talking about simply the kind of self-confidence that helps me down an unfamiliar staircase alone. That is part of it. But I mean something bigger than that: a belief that I am, despite imperfections, a real, positive person that somewhere in the sweeping, complex pattern of people there is a special place where I can make myself fit.

It took me years to discover and strengthen this belief. It had to start with the most elementary things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball, I thought he was mocking me and I was hurt. “I can’t use this,” I said. “Take it with you,” he urged me, “and roll it around.” The words stuck in my head. “Roll it around!” By rolling the ball I could hear where it went. This gave me an idea how to achieve a goal I had thought impossible: playing baseball. At Philadelphia’s Overbrook School for the Blind I invented a successful variation of baseball. We called it ground ball.

All my life I have set ahead of is a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to learn my limitations. It was no good trying for something I knew at the start was far out of reach because that only invited the bitterness of failure. I would fail sometimes anyway but on the average I made progress.

※ Word bank

freight [fre?t] n. 货运；船货 vaguely ['ve?gl?] adv. 含糊地 adjustment[??d??stm?nt] n. 调整，调节 rocker['r?k?] n. 摇杆；摇的人；摇轴

porch[p??t?] n. 门廊；走廊 staircase ['ste?ke?s] n. 楼梯 imperfection [?mp?'fek?(?)n] n. 不完美；瑕疵；缺点 sweeping a. 广泛的

elementary [el?'ment(?)r?] adj.初级的 mock [m?k] vt.嘲弄；vt.蔑视 urge ['??d?] vt.力劝，催促；推进

bitterness [b?t?n?s] n. 苦味；苦难；怨恨 variation [ve?r?'e??(?)n] n. 变化；[生物] 变异，变种 v. vary；n. variety；a. various

Skimming for structure.

Part 1 (Para. 1) A brief ____________ to the disaster Part 2 (Para. 2) Her new ______________ of life Part 3 (Paras.3-6) Her ____________ to the disaster

Scanning

1. What was the disaster?

2. What encouraged her to face up to the disaster?

3. How did she make adjustments to the disaster?

Summary

As is described in the passage, though faced with ____________________________, the author learnt ___________________________________ with the encouragement ______________________________, and finally ____________________________.

Further reading

Read the passage and find out sentences that reflect the author’s feelings.

Appreciation

Read the passage again, underline some encouraging and powerful sentences, and voice the reasons for appreciation.

Inspiration

What qualities can we learn from her?

Discussion

Choose one of the cases, discuss in groups, and give some suggestions. Case 1

He is a lovely boy. To his great discouragement, he wasn’t admitted to his dream school. He felt frustrated and disappointed. After being admitted to our school, he was in low spirits and was disconnected from class (游离于班级之外) for a long time, feeling that life was so unfair. What’s the correct attitude he should have? What should he do?

Case 2

She is a lovely and kind girl. Due to being too dependent on her family, the greatest difficulty she faced in senior high school was that she couldn’t adapt to the dormitory life. She felt greatly painful and couldn’t concentrate on her study, expecting to m

ove out. How can she adjust herself to the dormitory life and become independent?

Case 3

She was ranked first when she was admitted to Changjing Senior High School. However, in the first exam, she lost ground (失去了优势) and fell far behind. She broke down and was extremely discouraged. What should she do to find her confidence back?

Case 4

They fell in love with each other. But one day the boy wanted to break up because he liked another girl. She was so painful that she couldn’t concentrate on her study. If you were the girl, what would you do?

Assignments

1. Finish task-based reading for consolidation.

I fell off from a box car and landed on my head, 1. __________ me to be blind. My inspiration is that I appreciate the left life more and believe in life. The 2__________a person is for making these adjustments, the more meaningful his own world becomes.I had the potential 3. _________ (live). Without believing in myself, I would have lost my will to 4. ___________ against difficulties. Despite being 5. _________, I was able to make myself fit. By starting with the most elementary things, I 6. _________found my self-confidence back. At Philadelphia’s Overbrook School for the Blind, I invented a variation of baseball 7. _________ ground ball. During the process of overcoming difficulties, I also learned my limitations, 8. ________________ me from experiencing bitterness caused by failure. With these goals 9. _______________, I made progress on the whole.