This was the scene: a little two-room school house in the orange groves—or more likely where some groves had been plowed up—a remarkable elementary school teacher called Helen Watson, a strong, insistent mother called Katherine the Great, and a little blind boy called Larry, who was weary from his own personal cane trauma. What an incredible and promising combination this turned out to be for me. Mrs. Watson had all three grades—fourth, fifth, and sixth-in one of the classrooms in the little Gotha School, and she had agreed to take on this totally unusual student as one of her fifteen charges. How could she teach him? What could she do to engage him?What could she substitute for the blackboard he couldn't see?

My mom must have spoken to Mrs. Watson personally in an attempt to persuade her that I would fit in, for I am sure Mrs. Watson could easily have said no to the powers that be if she'd felt my presence in her class would have been disruptive or even unworkable. It has always been obvious to me that Mrs. Watson's willingness to accept me in her class was the first, and possibly the most important, milestone of my integration into the ordinary world of sighted people. After my mother, Helen Watson comes first on my guardian angel list. Apart from the buckets story I told earlier, I don't recall being interviewed by Mrs. Watson or anyone else, but they finally agreed to let me become what must have been one of the first mainstreamed blind kids in the country.