「故事·听力」I Had The Trashiest Childhood Ever

I Had The Trashiest Childhood Ever And Now I Have $4,000,000,000

Hi, everyone! I think every teenager has faced problems with their parents or at school with their peers and I can vouch for the fact that this has a huge impact on their life. But the impact is not necessarily a negative thing, like you might think. Just listen to my story about my discouraging childhood, which still couldn’t break me down despite some pretty bad circumstances.

I was born in a small town near London into quite a regular English family. We were not poor, but sometimes had troubles with money. My parents have always been quite supportive of me, especially my mom.  She used to say that she always knew how special I was. She’d noticed that I had some troubles with the coordination of my movements and eyesight when I was a kid. When I’d grown a little bit, it had become evident that numbers and letters didn’t make sense to me. Hence, doctors at some point diagnosed me with dyslexia. So now you can probably imagine how challenging my life at school was. 

Mom did her best to get me adapted to a normal life, so that I didn’t feel uncomfortable with my peers. However, her parenting methods might not seem very normal at first sight. For example, there was a moment when we were going to Granny's house in Devon. I think I must have been misbehaving or something like that in the back seat, because mom pushed me out of the car and said that I should find my own way there. There were about three miles left to go and I was a four-year-old. Even though many years have passed since then, I still feel the fear that I felt back then, standing there all alone surrounded by an endless field. I had nothing left to do but go. I didn't make it there until it had gotten dark. I was tired and starving, and maybe even angry – I don’t exactly remember. But when mom opened the door, she behaved as though nothing actually happened.

And I also remember one winter morning. It was snowy and cold outside when my mom woke me up, handed me my bike, and sent me to our relatives like 50 miles away from home. She said it was really important to reach them. She gave me some food, like an apple and a sandwich, and said that I had to get water somewhere on my own. It was hard and chilly to ride a bike in snowy weather. The whole way I kept wondering why fate had given me such a harsh mom. I almost got lost twice, since I could barely read the road signs. I’d probably never felt more exhausted than when I finally reached my destination that day. Tough approach, you might say, yeah? What mother could ever do this to her beloved son, right? But all this stuff definitely built my character. Despite some natural disabilities, I rarely got ill and formed a strong habit of never giving up.

My years at school were full of tribulations from my everyday life. According to some sort of a family tradition, my parents sent me to an all-boy's school and teachers there were never forbidden to beat us for any shortcoming. I had plenty of them, as you might have already guessed. Teachers literally considered me the dumbest person they’d ever met. Well, I guess they were right since I couldn’t answer any of their questions. Nobody realized that I was near-sighted. It took them a couple of semesters to find me the perfect glasses, but I still couldn’t study well, being dyslexic. I’d tried my skills on the playing field, but, you know, just couldn’t make myself become an athlete. I nearly failed out school, constantly being punished for not reading well, for not knowing the diameter of a circle, for having dirty shoes, or for poorly making my bed. Of course, at first, things like these were scary, painful, and humiliating. But at some point I got used to them to a certain extent, so that when any of my teachers would beat me, I'd say how grateful I was for their efforts. Thank goodness my classmates never bullied me, since virtually all of them were in the same position as me in terms of severe punishments. I hated the very situation that I had to be at that school.

Having realized that I needed something more than just studying, back then, I had tried to set up a business venture a couple of times. I am extremely fortunate that my parents nurtured my entrepreneurial spark and supported my dreams, whatever they were. At first I’d tried my luck at growing and selling Christmas trees, but wasn’t successful in it, because of rabbits. Those intrusive chiselers had eaten all the fir springs. I got so angry that I decided to get revenge. I started hunting them, but unfortunately I was only able to sell a few carcasses for a song. It was much less than I initially invested in the fir trees, but it had turned to be enough for another business.