I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off a car and landing on my head. Now I am thirty-two. I can vaguely remember the brightness of ______ and what color red is. It would be _____ to see again, but a (n) _____ can do strange things to people. I don’t mean I would prefer to go without my eyes. I simply mean that the loss of them made me appreciate more what I had ____.

My parents and my teachers saw something in me — a _____ to live — which I didn’t see, and they made me want to fight in out with ______.

The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. I am not talking about simply the kind of_____ that helps me down so unfamiliar staircase alone. I ___ something bigger than that: a confidence that I am, despite being _____ , a real, positive person; that there is a special place where I can make myself fit.

It took me years to discover and strengthen this confidence. It had to start with the easy and simple things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. I thought he was laughing at me and I was ______ . “I can’t use this,” I said. “Take with you,” he urged me, “and roll it around.” The words _____ in my head. “Roll it around!” By rolling the ball I could _____ where it went. This gave me an idea how to achieve a goal I had thought impossible before; playing baseball. At Philadelphia’s Overbook School for the Blind I ____ a successful variation of baseball. We called it ground ball.

I have set ahead of me a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to be clear about my _______. It was no good crying for something that I knew at the start was _____ out of reach because that only invited bitterness of failure. I would fail something anyway, but on the average I made progress.

A boy was walking home from school when he saw a large, tempting (诱人的) apple on one of the branches of an apple tree hanging out over a tall fence. The boy wasn’t much of a fruit-eater, _______ a bar of chocolate if given the choice, _______, as they say, the forbidden fruit can be tempting. Seeing the apple, the boy wanted it. The more he looked at it, the _______ he felt and the more he wanted that apple.

He stood on tiptoe (脚尖), _______ as high as he could, but even as his tallest _______ he was unable to touch it. He began to _______ up and down, as high as he could, at the _______ of each jump stretching his arms to get the apple. Still it remained out of _______.

Not giving up, he thought, if only he had something to _______ on. His school bag wouldn’t give enough height and he didn’t want to ____________ the things inside, like his lunch box, pencil case, and Gameboy. Looking ____________, he hoped he might find an old box, a rock, or, ____________ luck, even a ladder, but it was a tidy neighborhood and there was nothing he could use.

He had tried everything he could think to do. ____________ seeing any other choices, he gave up and started to walk ____________. At first he felt angry and disappointed thinking about how hungry he had become from his ____________, and how he really wanted that apple. The more he ____________ like this, the more unhappy he became.

____________, the boy of our story was a pretty smart guy, even if he couldn’t always get what get he wanted. He started to say to himself, “This isn’t ____________. I don’t have the apple and I’m feeling miserable as well. There’s ____________ more I can do to get the apple — that is unchangeable — but we are supposed to be able to ____________ our feelings. If that’s the case, what can I do to feel better?”

There was a little, but always strange girl. Everything was bad for her. She wished to meet an enchantress (女巫) that would turn her life a _______ tale.

One day an enchantress came and said that one of her wishes would _______. The girl became very happy at first, but then she started to think that she had a lot of wishes and all of them were _______ for her. She could not _______ just one. Then the _______ enchantress said that she would help her realize one wish every day. The girl became _______—now all her dreams will become realities.

From that day on, she was waiting every morning with joy and _______. Then as days passed, the dreams became real ones... But soon the little girl realized that _______ of the wishes didn’t give her joy and happiness which she _______ for. Many wishes brought her disappointment, and some __________ a pain. Almost every dream was an empty little girl’s caprice (任性). Though being __________, she suddenly found that she did not __________ this. Soon she started to __________ dreams. She was afraid to __________ every day, waiting for the realization of another wish. Crying, she asked the enchantress to __________ only one her dream-to live as she lived __________ and enjoy life.

The good enchantress had __________ upon the little girl. She waved her magic wand and disappeared. The girl was happy __________ she knew that now she would carefully seek for her one big __________ dream, not wasting time with short-term, __________, quite unnecessary wishes.