“All right,” I said, trying not to let the reluctance leak through my words. “Email it to me. I’ll read it tonight.”
“Thank you, Lee. You’re the best.” He popped in the other earbud and went back to typing. “Maybe I should’ve led with that instead of telling you that you looked like crap, huh?”
“Maybe.”
A minute later, the letter was in my inbox. I went ahead and opened the document since I had nothing better to do and, no offense to Denny, I wanted to get this over with. It was … not what I expected.
Denny’s letter changed everything for me. It was the catalyst. The thing that made me do all ofthis. You can decide whether that’s a good thing or not.
Dear Ms. Mulgrove and Members of the Horton Scholarship Committee,
As part of your application materials, you requested a letter explaining why I should receive a scholarship from your organization. I thought about this question a lot, about what I could say that would make me stand out from the rest of the applications you’ve read. I know one story I could tell. It’s the story everyone expects me to write in these applications and essays. And I’ve written and deleted that version several times.
I’m assuming the committee has already reviewed my application. If so, then you know a few things—I’m black, disabled, and from Virgil County, Indiana. And a bit of googling will reveal some pretty embarrassing YouTube clips from the local news, where fourteen-year-old Denny talks about the shooting and relearns how to use a cane during physical therapy.
So the story you probably thought you’d find when you opened this letter was something inspiring. Poor kid from tiny town, blind since birth, survives school shooting and now strives to rise above—or something like that. But that’s not my story.
I mean, I guess it is—all the pieces are right—but it’s alsonot. The facts are there, but the framing is all wrong.
So, instead of giving you the expected version of this letter, I’m going to give you the less inspiring but more honest version. And then I can tell you why I still deserve this scholarship.
Even before the shooting, I stood out at VCHS. I was one of only two black kids in a mostly white school (the other being my older sister), and, on top of that, the only blind kid. And people didn’t really know what to make of either. My classmates weren’t so bad. I’d known most of them since first grade, and, yeah, some were racist assholes (sorry, I probably shouldn’t sayassholein a scholarship letter) and some liked to steal my stuff and hide it since I couldn’t see. But at least they were up front about it. And my peers also weren’t scared to ask questions, “Is this racist?” and “But how do you do this if you can’t see?” being the most common. It could get exhausting, yeah, but it was better than the teachers.
The teachers just made weird assumptions or said really awkward things. Like the English teacher who told me how “well spoken” I was after I gave a presentation onLord of the Flies. Or the band instructor who begged me to join because he was certain I’d have musical talent. Because I guess every blind guy with dark skin might as well be Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles reincarnated. (I don’t have any musical talent, by the way.) Oh, and let’s not forget the social studies teacher who asked me if I’d “seen the news,” then immediately stuttered out an apology before changing “seen” to “heard.” And all of this was on top of the assumptions they made about what I would and wouldn’t need help with in class. Because asking me directly was an outrageous concept, I guess.
There was one teacher, though, whodidn’tmake me want to smack myself in the forehead with my own cane. And that was Essie Taylor.
Ms. Taylor started teaching the computer science classes at VCHS my freshman year, and she was amazing. She was young and funny and smart and, yes, I definitely had a crush on her. But don’t worry. This letter isn’t going in some weird, pervy direction. Ms. Taylor was my mentor and nothing more. And I wasn’t the only one who adored her. For a lot of us nerdier types, Ms. Taylor’s computer lab quickly became our second home. We spent every lunch, every free period, every chance we could get in her classroom. It was our geeky haven.
It obviously did not stay that way.
One of the reasons I loved Ms. Taylor—on top of her just being awesome—was that she knew her stuff when it came to tech. These days, assistive tech for blind folks is kind of amazing and, for some, life changing. Sure, screen readers are great—I use one every day—but it goes way beyond that. Did you know there are devices you can hold up to an item of clothing and it’ll tell you what color it is? There are apps that allow you to take a picture of something—like a label or even just a random object—and within seconds, you’ll get a voiced response telling you what the picture was of. And they can get really specific, too. Once I snapped a photo of my guide dog and I got “adult yellow Labrador on blue blanket.” There are video games for blind people, where the gameplay is entirely audio driven. There’s so much out there.
But there could be more.
Ms. Taylor was the first one to suggest I try building an app. She sent me links to articles and podcasts and helped me brainstorm ideas. She even said that if I finished it by the end of the semester, she’d count it as my final project. She made a nerdy freshman believe he didn’t have to wait until he grew up to start doing the things he dreamed of.
And then the shooting happened.
Ms. Taylor’s class was an elective, which meant there were students from all grade levels, but mostly freshmen. It was also a very small class. Most kids at VCHS preferred to take Ag classes, so there wasn’t even a dozen of us in the first period computer applications class. I was sitting near the front of the class with my friends Jared Grayson and Rosi Martinez.
Jared was a stealth nerd. He acted like your typical midwestern farmer’s son, but in reality, he knew more about video games than anyone I knew. He didn’t just play them—he knew all about the different developers, what engines they used, and graphics. He’d go on forever about graphics and frame rates, not seeming to grasp that the blind kid didn’t really care about that stuff.
Rosi, on the other hand, wasnota nerd. She was on student council, sure, but she was also freshman homecoming queen and the only underclassman to get picked for VCHS’s cheerleading team. But we’d become friends earlier that semester when she’d offered to tutor me in Spanish if I helped her with Ms. Taylor’s class.
For me, the weirdest part of thinking about that day is remembering hownormalit started. It was toward the end of the period and most of us had finished our classwork (building a database) and the room was a mix of chatter and keyboard clicking. Like it always was.
“I’m really excited about the new Age of Dragons game, but I can’t decide if I want it on PC or console,” Jared was saying. “It’ll look way better on PC, I know. It’s supposed to look amazing in 4K. But my computer’s been running slowly lately, and I’m worried it’ll lag. It’ll probably run better on my console, but it won’t look as good. I mean it’ll lookfinebut not with the kind of resolution you can get on a PC. But also—”
“Denny,” Rosi interrupted. “I’m trying to find a birthday present for my abuela. If you were a seventy-year-old woman, would you rather get a comfy sweater or a pretty necklace? Keep in mind I’m broke, so it’ll probably be coming from Walmart.”
“Hey,” Jared said. “We were talking over here.”
“No, you were talking,” Rosi said. “And Denny doesn’t care about what resolution you play your stupid game in. He’s blind.”
“Yeah, but hereallycares about what you buy your grandmother,” Jared retorted.
“He does. Because he’s a thoughtful guy. Unlike some people.”
