CBSE Class 10 English Reading Passages on Acceptance and Belonging Assignment Set 03

Questions

Passage 1 (Questions 1 to 8)

I was shopping in my home town when a young voice boomed across the aisle, 'Mum, there is a lady of my size!' The embarrassed mother rushed to her son, who looked about seven, and then turned to apologise to me. I smiled and told her it was all right. The wide-eyed boy studied me from head to toe and asked, 'Why are you so little?' 'It is the way God made me,' I said.

I enjoy talking to children and explaining why I look different. It has taken me many years to build the confidence to do so. I am three feet nine inches tall. I have achondroplasia, which means I have very short limbs. When I was born, my mother was told that I was a dwarf. In my childhood her main concern was my health, and our family doctor put her mind at ease by saying that I would have no major medical problems. My parents encouraged me to do everything other children did. When the neighbours roller-skated, I roller-skated; when they got bicycles, I got one too. The neighbours treated me as a normal child, and I did not realise how short I was until I started school. A few children picked on me and called me names, and for a while I hated the first day of every school year.

As time went on, I learnt to smile and accept that I would be noticed all my life, and I decided that my uniqueness was an advantage. My friends became protective. People ask them whether I live in a doll's house, and they stare when I step out of my car on the driver's side. When people are rude, I remind myself of what else I have: a great family and good friends. My hope is that by taking time with children I will encourage them to accept their peers, whatever size and shape they come in, and to treat them with respect.

Passage 2 (Questions 9 to 16)

Last June my elder daughter Sylvie finished kindergarten at the school near our home. If my wife and I have our way, she will graduate from the same school. I want this to be her only school and our town to be her home town, as both eluded me. My father was in the army and I attended numerous schools. Our wandering life gave a grand upbringing, but it had a cost: of all the friends I made on the way, I kept in touch with only one. I am from everywhere and exactly from nowhere.

I want my daughters to have the home town I missed, a place they know closely, care about and return to with a thrill. When my wife took a teaching post here, we moved from Chicago to settle in this town almost six years ago, and the change was hard. We missed movie houses, second-hand bookshops and good restaurants, and we found cheap malls and corn fields being turned into faceless suburbs. Then we began to look for the good things here, and found many: the children's corner of the public library, a number of parks and a folk-music club that draws top performers to a place no bigger than our living room.

Where we found good places, we found good people. Slowly we built a circle of good friends, and with it an unspoken belief that we would be there for each other for the long haul, watching each other's children grow up and supporting each other through the joys and troubles of parenthood.

There is a yearly party, a joint sale and potluck dinners. We celebrated my younger daughter's birthday with a party on our front lawn. On Saturday mornings the shopkeepers greet my children and me by name and hand out sweets. To the old-timers this may be unremarkable, but to a vagabond like me this acceptance is heart-warming and sustaining.