Growing up as a child I was afraid to say I was blind. No child wants to be different from their peers. My first memory of my blindness making me different was in kindergarten. Everyday we would have story time, where everyone sat on their carpet squares and picked a book to read. A little boy named Ben held his book up to his face and asked me, “Why do you look at your book like this?” That was the start of my faking everything so that I wouldn't look like I was blind.

In second grade I was prescribed a new pair of glasses which were as thick as coke bottles. Again it was silent reading time and my teacher told me to get my glasses out to read. Even with my glasses, my book was just a few inches from my face. Another boy said, “Look at how thick her glasses are.” I could feel the tears burning in my eyes. I tried to hide the tears, but I knew the glasses only magnified them even more. In third grade I had a CCTB put in the back of my classroom. This was probably worst of all. There were many other kids in the class who were Cambodian who didn't know I was also Cambodian. I would hide my tears as I sat behind the big screen in the back of the room every time I heard them in my own language. So for the rest of my schooling, continuing on to middle school and high school, I tried my hardest to look like I wasn't blind. I would hold my book at a distance in front of my face that looked like everyone else in the class. I would pretend to read in class during silent reading time, then when I got home I had to read what I was supposed to have read in class plus the homework reading I had to do. When I had large print books I didn't want to pull them out because there were so much bigger and called even more attention to me. Then it even got difficult to read large print towards the end of high school and as I started college. My tricks were getting harder as the classes go harder. The teachers would just skip over me when it was my turn to read out loud because I could read fast enough. I not only felt embarrasses of being blind I felt dumb now.

I am now 23 years old and finishing up at Louisiana Center for the Blind, a training center which uses the teaching philosophy of structured discovery learning. My outlook on being blind has changed completely due to training I have received here at the center and with my involvement with the National Federation of the Blind. I am proud to carry a cane and call myself blind. What makes me most proud is I can read without struggling and straining my eyes. I somewhat knew the Braille alphabet before coming to LCB, now I can read about 90 words per minute, which is faster than my print reading speed. Instead of sitting in front of a CCTB leaning into the screen, I can relax anywhere I like with a Braille book.

One of my tricks used to involve pretending to read a menu at a restaurant. Instead of asking someone to read the menu to me, I would just order something that I knew would be there. Now I ask for a Braille menu. If they have one, I can read everything for myself: the items, the descriptions, and the prices. This allows me to sample new kinds of food which I never would have known was there before.

A few months ago I was a bridesmaid in my aunts wedding. At the reception, I got up in front of everyone and read a poem. It may have been the poem, it may have been my reading Braille, it may have been both, but I managed to make my aunt cry. Reading the poem up there in Braille was the final step in showing my family that I was comfortable with my blindness.

If I knew earlier in life how much Braille would have changed my life, I would have pushed to learn it a long time ago. Unfortunately, I didn't know how important it was. It's not fair for a parent of teacher to expect a “visually impaired” child to read large print. Not every blind person is the same. However, every blind child should have the same opportunities to learn Braille.

The real problem of blindness is not the lack of eyesight. The real problem is the misunderstanding and lack of information which exists. If a blind person has proper training and opportunity, blindness is only a physical nuisance.