Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff Read Online Free PDF Page A

here.” Then she flared her nose, clicked her heels and turned away from me, in more ways than one.
    So I did what any other kid would do in my situation: I smuggled the packet out of the classroom. I felt like I was doing something illegal, and yet my motives were pure. I had to prove to her, or rather prove to myself, that I could do the work under the right conditions.
    I secretly unfolded the contraband on my bed that night. The story, which had seemed so confusing in class, became quite clear to me in the still of my room. I not only got it, I could even relate to it. It was the true story of Louis Braille. He lived in the 1800s and was blinded by a childhood accident. During this time, society shut off the blind from having much of an education. Many were left with the bleak future of becoming homeless beggars. Despite much misunderstanding of his disability, Louis Braille “advocated” for himself. He developed a reading system of raised dots for the blind, which enabled him to read on a par with his peers. A world of books and knowledge opened up to him that he and others like him were literally blind to before. I was like Louis in my classroom setting. I was being made to learn like the other students who were sighted in a way I wasn’t.
    That night I sat down at my word processor. My thoughts spilled out so fast that my fingers danced across the keyboard, straining to keep up. I explained myself in terms of Louis, in hopes that Mrs. Smith would finally understand me. Funny thing is, somewhere along the line I began to understand myself in a way I never had before.
    I cited many other famous people who were in some way different in their learning styles and abilities throughout history. Hans Christian Andersen was said to have been learning disabled, and yet he wrote some of the best fairy tales of our time. I summed it all up by asking, “If I were a student with a vision impairment, would I be seated in the back of the room?” I questioned, “Would I have my glasses taken away from me so that I would not have an unfair advantage over other, glassless students?”
    Mrs. Smith never looked at me as she handed my paper back facedown on my desk that day. She never even commented that my work was done on the word processor. As my eyes focused in on the white page, I found an A decorating the margin instead of her customary X. Underneath were her neatly red-penned words: “See what you can do when you apply yourself?”
    I took the paper, tucked it away in my folder and shook my head. I guess some people will never get it!
    C. S. Dweck

2

DRUGS &
ALCOHOL
    R esolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself loses his misery.
    Matthew Arnold

The Last Song for Christy
    Matt never did drugs. He spent his afternoons and nights riding his skateboard through backstreets of the small town that raised him. His friends would experiment with the usual substances, but not Matt.
    Christy was his sister; six years older. She and Matt were close. They both liked tattoos and metal guitar riffs. Christy would paint incredible portraits and abstract images, and Matt would jam on his guitar. They shared stories, and they always said “I love you” before bed.
    When Matt and I started dating, the first family member I was introduced to was his sister, Christy.
    â€œSee this tattoo on my wrist. Christy has it, too. We got them together.” He lit up whenever he talked about her.
    Matt was at the peak of his skateboarding career, and Christy was still painting. She was beautiful. They looked a lot alike—black hair, blue eyes. Christy was petite—her makeup dark and interesting—her lips, red and passionate. She looked the part she played—the artist, the once-rebel who survived hell and was now back, living life while revisiting the shadows of her past with each stroke of her paintbrush.
    When Matt was in junior high, the police took Christy away. His parents