I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off car and landing on my head. Now I am thirty-two. I can vaguely remember the brightness of 1._______ and what color red is. It would be good to 2.________ again, but a(n) 3.______ can do strange things to people. I don ‘t mean I would prefer to go without my eyes. I simply mean that the loss of them made me appreciate more what I had 4.________. My parents and my teachers saw something in me—a 5.________ to live— which I didn’t see, and they made me want to fight in out with 6._______.
The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. am not talking about simply the kind of 7._______ that helps me down so unfamiliar（不熟悉的）staircase（楼梯）alone. I 8._______ something bigger than that: confidence that I am, despite（尽管） being 9._________,a real positive（乐观自信的）person and that there is a special place where I can make myself fit.
It took me years to discover and strengthen（加强）this confidence. It had to start with the easy and simple things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. I thought he was laughing at me and I was 10._______. “I can’t use this,” I said. “Take with you,” he urged （催促）me, “and roll it around.” The words 11._______ in my head. “Roll it around！” By rolling the ball I could 12.________ where it went. This gave me an idea how to achieve（达到）a goal（目标）I had thought impossible before: playing baseball. At Philadelphia’s Overbook School for the Blind I 13._______ a successful variation（变化）of baseball, we called it ground ball.
I have set ahead of me a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to be clear about my 14.______. It was no good crying for something that I knew at the start was 15._________ out of reach because that only invited bitterness （痛苦）of failure. I would fail something anyway, but on the average I made progress.
1.A. sky B. cloud C. sunshine. D. mist
2.A. hear B. see C. feel D. smell
3.A. disaster B. environment C. incident D. wonder
4. A. lost B. left C. used D. cared
5. A. purpose B. potential C. pressure D. preparation
6. A. energy B. happiness C. luck D. blindness
7. A. self-respect B. self-control C. self-confidence D. self-defence
8. A. think B. consider C. guess D. mean
9. A. imperfect B. perfect C. unfair D. fair
10. A. worried B. encouraged C. shocked D. hurt
11. A. stuck B. impressed C. occupied D. held
12. A. see B. hear C. notice D. observe
13. A. invented B. discovered C. instructed D. directed
14. A. experience B. advantages C. knowledge D. limitation
15. A. hardly B. wildly C. highly D. deeply
