My Reality Check Bounced! - Jason Ryan Dorsey [19]
The first class she took with this new attitude was about educating youth with disabilities. This class was as far from the College of Business as Denise could physically walk. She quickly learned that half her grade would be determined by a social service project. Twice a week for the whole semester, Denise would be required to volunteer at a school or nonprofit that served youth with disabilities. Denise and her friend Robert, a 240-pound linebacker, signed up to volunteer at the School for the Blind, the volunteer location closest to their college.
As her first volunteer day approached, Denise was anxious about helping kids who could not see. She was afraid it might be too much of a stretch for her skills and patience. After all, she had no experience helping blind people. She had no blind friends. In fact, Denise had never met a blind person.
Then she met Bobby, a thirteen-year-old-boy who was completely blind, had a speech impediment, and was mentally slower than other kids his age. Despite his challenges, he was full of spunk, and Denise liked him right away. She learned that she and Robert would work together on a project to help Bobby. She couldn’t imagine what they could possibly teach him. Then she found out their assignment: bowling.
Yes, bowling! Apparently, Bobby had signed up to bowl in the Special Olympics, but he had never actually been bowling. It was up to Denise and Robert to teach Bobby how to bowl, something that neither of them were particularly good at—and they could see.
Denise didn’t want to let Bobby down, but she had no idea how this was going to work.
The three of them held hands and, using a map, walked across the school’s campus to a huge gymnasium. There, they went down a flight of stairs into a dark basement. Denise flicked the light switch and stopped in her tracks. The basement of the School for the Blind had a bowling alley! There were two regulation bowling lanes, racks of bowling balls, a scoreboard, and a machine that automatically reset the pins. Maybe blind bowling was more popular than she assumed?
Clueless on how to teach a blind kid to bowl, they started with the basics. First, Bobby had to learn the distance and layout of the lanes. To do this, the three of them walked back and forth down the lane from the foul line to the pins.
Robert then bowled one time so Bobby could hear the sound of his new sport. When the eight-pound ball collided with the old pins the explosive noise echoed around the concrete basement. Bobby smiled wildly. He wanted to make that sound!
The main difference between Bobby bowling and a sighted person bowling is that Bobby wouldn’t be “throwing” the bowling ball. Instead, he would be placing the bowling ball atop a movable ramp located at the beginning of the bowling lane. He would then push the bowling ball down this ramp and it would roll toward the pins. The ramp moved side-to-side, so as Bobby got better he could aim for specific pins.
The main challenges for blind bowlers are learning how hard to push the bowling ball, how to aim to hit specific pins on the second roll, and then developing the patience to wait for the sweet sound of the ball and pins crashing together.
Denise helped Bobby position a six-pound bowling ball atop the bowling ramp. She stepped back while he pushed the bowling ball forward with all his thirteen-year-old might. The two of them stood motionless waiting for a sound. Krrrraccccck! Bobby hit the pins on his first try! Denise and Robert started cheering and clapping. At first Bobby froze, then he realized it was safe and began laughing and yelling and giggling.
Twice a week for a semester it went on like this. For three hours at a time, Denise and Robert would teach Bobby how to bowl. When Bobby had a particularly good practice session, the three friends would end their time together bouncing on a massive trampoline. They bounced until their legs felt like Jell-O. This must have been quite a sight: one full-grown linebacker, one petite woman, and one very happy thirteen-year-old,