HAVING AN ICE TIME.

I know I sound like an old man when I post about the simple pleasures my dorm mates and I had when we were young. Even so, we needed no electronic games to have fun. In fact, we frequently took perverse pleasure in doing things that our minders frowned upon. While they complained about the rain and admonished us about avoiding puddles, we enjoyed splashing through them while wearing rubber boots. As a freak snow storm raged one Saturday afternoon, we frolicked amid the flakes while our supervisor shook her head and said we were crazy.

Continuing on with my series of posted excerpts of Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School), here's one example of how my schoolmates and I enjoyed a simple pleasure, just as any group of sighted boys would.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Though the winter was relatively mild, freezing rain fell one night. The news went through the dorm like a wildfire that the cinder path next to the school was slippery and we could have fun sliding on it. I hurried outside to join in the excitement. We managed to slide quite fast down that sidewalk. Since our shoes had no treads, skating to the end was easy. All too soon for us, the bell rang for class. When we ran to the sidewalk at recess, we discovered that a caretaker poured salt on it, ruining our fun.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. Click here to read more about this book and to order it. You may also e-mail me directly if the comment form doesn't work.