A Ball to Roll Around 滚球

罗伯特·G. 奥尔曼(Robert G. Allman)

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 color red is. It would be wonderful to see again, but a calamity 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 private world becomes. The adjustment is never easy. I was bewildered 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 collapsed 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: an assurance that I am, despite imperfections , a real, positive person; that somewhere in the sweeping , intricate pattern of people there is a special place where I can myself fit.

It took me years to discover and strengthen this assurance. 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 me a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to learn my limitations . It was no good to try for something I knew at the start was wildly out of reach because that only invited the bitterness of failure. I would fail sometimes anyway but on the average I made progress.

freight yard 货场

landing on my head 头先着地

- calamity [kəˈlæmɪtɪ] n. 灾难

otherwise=if I hadn't been blind

prefer to go without eyes=prefer being blind

what I had left 指除眼睛以外的器官，如耳朵等

- potential [pəˈtenʃl] n. 潜力

become a chair rocker 在摇椅中度过余生

- imperfection [ˌɪmpəˈfekʃn] n. 缺陷，不完美

sweeping, intricate pattern of people 芸芸众生

- variation [ˌveərɪˈeɪʃn] n. 变更，变化

ground ball 地面球

learn my limitations 了解自己能力有限

四岁时，我从大西洋城的货场的装箱车上一头栽下来，摔成双目失明。时隔28年，我还能模糊地记得太阳的光亮与红色是什么样。再能看见该是多美好呀，但是灾难可以对人们造成一些奇异的后果。前两天我突然想到如果我不是盲人，兴许我对生活的爱还没有这么强烈，现在，我相信生活的美好。我不能肯定，要不然我会这么深地相信生活。我的意思不是说我宁愿不要眼睛。我只是说失去了眼睛让我更加珍视给我剩下的一切。

我认为，生活要求一系列针对现实的调整。人们越是欣然做出这些调整，他私人的那个世界就变得越有意义。这种调整绝非易事。我曾经困惑，害怕。但是我很幸运。我的父母和老师在我身上看到了某种东西——一种生存的能力，你可以这样说——不过我却看不到，他们使我要跟失明决战到底。

我必须学会的最艰难的课程就是相信自己。那是基本的。如果我没能够相信自己，我就会垮了，就会在有生之年，整天在前门廊里坐在摇椅上。当我说相信自己时，我不仅仅是讲帮助我走下不熟悉的楼梯台阶这种事的自信心。那只是部分而已。我指的是更大程度上的自信：虽然身有残疾，但我仍然相信自己是真正的、有希望的人；在复杂的形形色色的人海中，有一个特别的地方适合我自己。

我用了好多年才发现并加强了这种信念。这必须从最基本的事情开始。有一次，有人送我一个室内棒球。我以为他在愚弄我，感到受了伤害。“我不能用它，”我说。“拿着它吧，”他劝着我，“在地上滚滚。”我牢记了这些话。“在地上滚滚！”滚球时我可以听到球到了哪里。这使我知道了如何去实现我曾经以为不可能达到的目标：打棒球。在费城的奥福布鲁克盲人学校，我创造了一种棒球游戏，很受欢迎。我们叫它地面球。

在我整个一生，我给自己确定了一系列目标，而后努力达到，每次一个。我必须了解自己的局限性。有些事情从一开始我就知道根本不可能办到，努力也是徒然，因为那只能招来失败的痛楚。不管怎么说，有时我会失败的，但是总的说来我取得了进步。