Crashing Through Read Online Free PDF

it—to be able to move so swiftly and independently—thrilled him. He borrowed Diane’s and began to pedal. The bike traced an ampersand on the street and then toppled onto him. Mike tried again. He fell again. He crashed for two more days, seasoning the street with bits of skin as Ori Jean told him, “You’re getting there.”
    At school, things were just the same. Mike took tetherballs to the face and dodgeballs to the groin. He bloodied his nose, cracked toes, and broke fingers. While running to first base in kickball, he stepped on top of the ball, fell backward, and bashed his head on the pavement. He was unconscious for twenty minutes and rushed to the hospital. When he returned to school the next week, he played again.
    School would have been a breeze for Mike were it not for resource instructor Medina. Some teachers were willing to excuse the blind students from assignments, but if Medina found out he would step in and force the kids to do the work anyway. He might ask, “Where the hell is your homework?” Some kids would bellyache or ask why he cared about their schoolwork if their own classroom teachers didn’t. “Because you should care,” Medina told them. “That’s what it’s all about.” Some parents objected to that kind of talk—they did not think a caretaker should confront a child already so challenged. Ori Jean told Mike that she and Medina connected.
    Mike liked the other blind students. In ways, they were family, their resource room and teacher a common bond. But he didn’t necessarily understand them. Many chose to eat their lunches inside rather than go to the playground with the sighted kids—how could they not want to move? A lot of them walked tentatively, as if bumping into something was the worst thing in the world. Some of them had never even gotten lost.
    One of them became Mike’s close friend. Mark Pighin was exceptionally bright and witty, and he liked the things Mike liked. Neither broke down when Medina got fed up with their excuses and told them, “Don’t give me that bull.” Soon Pighin’s family was inviting Mike to join them on their two-week summer vacations, a tradition that would last for years.
    The match between the boys wasn’t obvious. In Mike’s view, Pighin was coddled by his parents. They would cut his meat, guide him by the arm even in familiar areas, lay out his clothes.
    On a Pighin family vacation, Mike got the idea to explore the shuttered upper floors of the old lodge at which they were staying. He and Pighin made it to the musty attic. Pighin refused to go in—he was afraid there were rats inside, an animal he believed to be three feet long. Mike knew Pighin couldn’t leave without him so he went inside, followed by his terrified friend. Pighin kept talking about the rats. Mike, unable to resist, bent down and pinched his friend’s ankle. Pighin let out a bloodcurdling scream. The adults came running. When he could speak, Pighin told them he’d been bitten by a rat. Mike couldn’t believe his good luck—he was scot-free! But a moment later, he admitted to the pinch and prepared to accept the consequences. It was worth it to Mike. The attic was like an unknown world to him. At least he had gone and looked.
             
    Even as Ori Jean raised Mike to embrace his blindness, she continued to hope that he would see. She had researched eye surgeons since the family had arrived in California and found perhaps the best in the world, Dr. Max Fine, just twenty-five miles away in San Francisco. On three occasions when Mike was in grade school, Fine transplanted corneas into his right eye (his left eye had been too badly damaged to try). It never worked. When Fine told Ori Jean after the last operation that nothing more could be done—now or ever—she exhaled. No longer would she have to go through that cycle of hope and disappointment.
    By 1962, when Mike was nine, things started to strain in the May house. His mother had given birth to a