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Before Anne Sullivan came to our house, one or two people had told my mother that I was and idiot. I can understand why. Here was a seven-year-old girl who at the age of 19 months had become deaf and blind. And because I was deaf, I could not learn to speak. Struggling in a world of silence and darkness, I did seem like an idiot.
But this was before Anne Sullivan came to stay. She was a lively young woman with patience and imagination. A born teacher, she dreamed of turning a deaf-blind creature into a useful human being.
What a challenge I must have been to this young teacher! I remember the many times she tried to spell words into my small hand. But neither words nor letters meant anything to me. I thought her finger movements were some kind of game. But at last, on April 5, 1887, she reached my understanding. About a month after her arrival, she taught me the wood “water.”
It happened at the well where I was holding a jug while Annie pumped. As the water splashed onto my hand, she kept spelling w-a-t-e-r into my other hand with her fingers. Suddenly I understood!
It was the first joy I had known for years. I reached out to Annie’s hand. She understood I was begging for new words, for the names of the things I touched. The words – so full of meaning – flew from her hand to mine. Those first words were to change my world.
One of the first things Annie did was to teach me how to play. I had not laughed since I became deaf. One day she came into my room laughing merrily. Putting my hand on her face, she spelled l-a-u-g-h. Then she tickled me into a burst of laughter. Next Annie took me by the hand and taught me how to hop and skip. She then immediately spelled the words h-o-p and s-k-i-p for me. In a few days I was learning – and enjoying it – like any child.
Annie kept some pigeons in a cage so that when they were let out I might feel the air from their wings. In this way I found out how birds could fly. The pigeons would land on my head and shoulders. I learned to feed them and understand their ways. That is why birds, though I could not see them, have always been as much a part of my world as flowers and stones.
Teacher would not let the world about me be silent. Through my hands and fingers, I “heard” the sounds that one hears on a farm, the noises made by cows, horses, chickens, pigs. She brought me into touch with everything that could be reached or felt – sunlight, the rustling of silk, the noises of insects, the creaking of a door, the voice of a loved one.
Annie treated me exactly as if I were a seeing and hearing child. As soon as I had enough words to know the difference between right and wrong, I was put to bed whenever I did something wrong. How wonderful to be treated like a normal child, even when I was bad!
As I took back upon those years, I am struck by Annie’s wisdom. Perhaps she understood me because she herself had always had very weak eyes.
Annie was born in a poor family, on April 4, 1866. Her mother died when she was eight years old. Two years later, her father disappeared, never to be heard from again. Annie and her brother were sent to a house for orphans. There the boy died.
No one outside the orphans’ home was interested in Annie, who was almost blind. But finally, after four years, she managed to escape by crying out to a group of visitors, “I want to go to school!” |
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外语学习
2011 人阅读
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6 人回复
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2022-11-18
