I said, “Can we open the window?” Sotto voce, Mum said, “The others probably want it closed.” It was the early 1960s. I was eight or nine and traveling with my family to England’s south coast in a steam train’s eight-passenger compartment. The
Memoir
Memoir, Egotism and the Arrogance of “Inspirational”
1 To an outsider, I may not be recognizable as the same human being occupying a photograph taken of me when I was six. But I know that boy better than anyone else. 2 At long last, I’ve completed a childhood memoir, Courage Comes to You, that I
I Don’t Even Want to be a Friend: A Recollection
1 A girl named Emily, who sounded austere when she spoke in the high school social studies course we were both taking, made a point one day of walking with me to my next class. “Are you looking for a reader?” she said. It happened I was. We
Minority Within a Minority
Back around 1971, the parents who ran the Guild for Fairfield County’s visually impaired students, in Connecticut, arranged for a group therapy session for six high school students, including me. Each of us was the only blind student in our
Was Your Childhood Really So Boring?
The other day, a friend told me her childhood was boring. I’ve been thinking up questions to lead her to discover her childhood wasn’t boring after all. First, when you say your childhood was boring, were you bored, or are you saying telling your
Speech Therapy
In this short recollection, I am attending a school in London at the age of eight or nine. I’d had a cleft palate surgically repaired when I was too young to remember, and now I was required to undergo speech therapy. Looking back, I marvel at the