It was eight o’ clock on Christmas morning, and Uncle Tom said he wanted to listen to the news. My 11-year-old self was wondering why grown-ups would be interested in the news when there were important things to be done, such as handing out presents. However, while I was only half-listening to the radio broadcast, I was confused that I had heard that report earlier.

My older brother, Colin, figured out what was happening. “Pete, it’s a tape recorder! We’ve got our tape recorder!” This was one of those rare moments when my inside gave an involuntary lurch (倾斜). Colin and I had both been blind from birth. In the late 1950s, tape recorders were definitely the top choice for blind kids, especially with the rise of rock ‘n’ roll.

But it wasn’t the first time I had been attracted to a tape recorder. I vividly remember walking into a room when I was four and hearing a child’s beautiful singing. It turned out that my dad had borrowed a tape recorder for preparing his projects. And for the first time, in the same way that a sighted child might react to seeing themselves in a mirror or a photograph, I got the sense of myself as a separate person who existed outside my head and was experienced by other people.

Then I became a broadcaster at school. I would wander around the school with my microphone, recording my thoughts in the style of the voices I heard on the radio. But the biggest challenge was not finding things to do with the tape recorder but taking it away from Colin. His generosity on the first day we got it did not extend to handing it over to his brother at school. “You’ll break it,” he would say.

But ten years later, I drew on the confidence gained from those early explorations of the sound and walked into a radio station, in the hopes of selling myself as a broadcast journalist. Eight years later, I presented my first report for BBC’s Six O’Clock News. I never thought that a Christmas present had changed my life.

It was the day of the big cross-country run. Students from seven different elementary schools in and around the small town of 100-Mile House, British Columbia, were warming up and walking the route through thick evergreen forest.

I looked around and finally saw David standing by himself off to the side by a fence. He was small for ten years old, with messy red hair. But his usual big toothy grin was absent today. I walked over and asked him why he wasn’t with the other children. The only response he gave me was he had decided not to run. What was wrong? He had worked so hard for this event! David’s cerebral palsy (脑瘫) prevented him from walking or running like other children, but at school his peers thought of him as a regular kid. He always participated to the best of his ability in whatever they were doing. It just took him longer. He had stubbornly run a total of twenty three kilometres in practice runs to prepare for that day’s two-and-a-half-kilometre run, and he had asked me to come and watch. We sat down together on some steps, but David wouldn’t look at me. I quietly said, “David, if you don’t want to run today, no one is going to make you. But if you’re not running because you’re afraid someone is going to laugh, that’s not a good enough reason. There will always be someone who will laugh and say mean things. Are you going to let them get in your way? If you really want to run, David, then you run!” I held my breath as David took this in. Then he looked at the field and said, “I’m gonna run.”

The starter’s gun sounded. But he had only gone a few metres before he tripped and fell flat on the ground. My heart sank. As I started to shout encouragement, David picked himself up and started again. All the other runners had disappeared over the hill. But it didn’t matter. He had worked for it, and he wouldn’t give up!

I waited anxiously by the finish line as the most runners completed and another race had begun. Still no David! I started to feel sick. Had I done the wrong thing? Could he have become lost? Finally, a small figure emerged from the forest. David raised his arms in triumph as he crossed the finish line to wild cheers and applause. He caught my eye, flashed me a toothy grin and said, “That was easy!”

Thanksgiving time came and all the relatives were gathered around the long table, or seated behind TV trays. The television was on and some folks were watching it while talking with one another. Something on television got their attention and one of the adults said, “Listen at it!” Someone else replied. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”

Simple phrases were spoken by folks whose language was simple and brief. They had several idioms that were just as colorful phrases and words that brightened the room and warmed the conversation. In school we were taught to speak differently. The way our relatives spoke was discouraged. Sometimes our parents would say things we weren’t taught in school. They’d often correct themselves, as if getting rid of a mistake. Of course we learned some of their phrases and used them. They were comfortable words to pronounce, familiar.

Our father’s side of the family was from Arkansas and Oklahoma and they spoke with the accents native to their birth states. Their voices musical and often high, it was easy to pick up that effect in our own speech and at school my brother and I were often teased for the way we spoke. Our mother’s side of the family came from Illinois and they had a tendency to talk fast. They had an accent, too, and my brother and I added that to our own speech, confusing the kids at school all the more. Our father’s side of the family loved to laugh and have a good time. Our mother’s side of the family was more serious about how they took life in; their joys more silently experienced and enjoyed. It was a rich picture of culture and it gave my brother and me a colorful view in life.

Thanksgiving holiday was always an easy comfortable going day. It was the first real holiday of the season when everyone came together in one place, and a good time was spent happily together by all.