Thunder Dog by Michael Hingson Read Free Book Online Page B

and my parents, who had to read my assignments to me. When the other kids colored, drew pictures, or did other visual projects, I waited. And waited.
    My parents knew I was bright and worked with me at home. My father was mostly self-educated, picking up electronics and electrical engineering on his own along with a few technical courses he picked up along the way. I probably learned much more from my parents than I learned at school those first few years.
    My dad taught me how to do algebra in my head when I was six. I not only got the answers to the problems, but I knew why I got the answers. Mom worked with me on my other assignments and with most of my learning taking place at home, I was often bored at school. The teachers couldn’t involve me because I couldn’t read printed materials or look at diagrams or pictures. There were no books for me to read, and I was often left to my own devices. I felt detached and separated from the rest of the kids and often wandered over to the window and stood, listening for what was happening outside.
    One day in class, the teacher asked us to draw a picture. I sat with my blank sheet of paper while the other kids drew. The teacher told me the other kids would help. I kept asking the kids at my table for help, but they were too busy with their own drawings. Finally, one boy got fed up with me, grabbed my piece of paper, and crumpled it up. He dropped it in front of me and said, “Don’t bother us.” I got the message. It was the first time I remember my blindness provoking hostility.
    Outside of school, Palmdale was an exciting place for a boy to grow up. Edwards Air Force Base nearby was the testing ground for top-secret military aircraft with Chuck Yeager and the rest of The Right Stuff guys breaking through the sound barrier and creating tremendous sonic booms, often over the general’s house.
    At first I wandered around the quiet neighborhoods with my mom and brother, but before long I navigated the streets all by myself. I made it a game to find my way back to our house. I learned that each driveway had small but detectable differences in elevation, length, and in the number and shape of cracks. Our driveway was a bit longer and flatter than the others, and I learned to feel and hear the difference in the incline. In a perfect world, I would have learned how to use a cane at this point. But I didn’t know any other blind people, and I didn’t know anything about canes. Instead, my senses naturally sharpened as I explored the area, and I used touch and hearing to travel on my own.
    Contrary to popular misconceptions, blind people do not magically obtain other heightened senses. We have to develop better hearing through practice, just like anyone else. And with practice, it wasn’t long before I learned to walk on my own to Yucca Elementary School, three blocks from our house. Soon after that, I began riding my bike and alarming the neighbors.
    Several times during my early school years, my parents were called in to meet with the principal, who would strongly recommend that I be sent to the residential school for the blind in Berkeley, California, several hundred miles north of our town. My parents always refused. They wanted me at home and in regular classrooms, “mainstreaming” me before the term had ever been coined.
    Finally, the summer between third and fourth grade, the school district hired a resource teacher to provide me and a few other blind children in the area with training in Braille. Her name was Cora Hershberger, and she helped me relearn Braille. I picked it up quickly and at last I could read for myself—the door to books and to learning now open. My curiosity and imagination ignited, and I fell in love with books as I explored the world through dots on a page, just as I had explored my neighborhood by learning the cracks and bumps of the sidewalks. Those exploration techniques I learned as a child came in so handy when we had to make our way out of