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First Payment for Doubt's Benefit

FROM
Break Out: Finding Freedom
When You Don't Quite Fit The Mold
James R. Hasse

"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."

Thomas Henry Huxley, On Medical Education

"How much are the pumpkins?" she asked in a velvety voice. Her long skirt whipped gently in the brisk fall breeze. Her innocent face and quick smile overcame the cold eyes I still remember 40 years later.

"Twenty five cents for the big ones and 15 cents for the small ones," I recited breathlessly, recalling how Eddie, my 12-year-old house brother, told those who stopped along our edge-of-town farm to buy pumpkins that October.

To my surprise, she seemed to understand the words I managed to squeeze out as the adrenaline raced through my body. I had gotten my feet to track quickly enough to go down five steps and open the front door before she had decided no one was home.

"Can I go and look at them?" she asked cheerfully.

"Sure," I replied, glad I could stay at the glass storm door and watch her pick out her pumpkins without going outside and stumbling behind her in an uneasy gait that is often one of the marks of cerebral palsy.

I was the only one home, but I didn't want Eddie to lose a sale just because he wasn't there. It was his project, and I didn't understand why he was not yet home from school. At 5:30, he was usually adding new pumpkins from the field out back to the sidewalk that led from the driveway to the house. My house mother, Pat, usually home by the time I returned from school, was shopping, and Ted, my house father, was still at work.

The breeze swirled golden leaves across the sidewalk as I watched the lady walk back and forth along the row of pumpkins. I remembered Eddie's cash box was on the kitchen table and quickly traced the steps in my mind I would have to take, without falling, if I would have to make change. She then came back to the house.

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