Audio Sotries: 02/05/12

1. “I looked in those big green eyes, and I was a done deal.”

http://storycorps.org/listen/stories/peter-and-jacqueline-headen/

This story absolutely tugged at my heart. What caught my eye in the first place was the title of the story. It is a phrase that describes love at first sight. When I heard the beginning of the story I thought it was going to be about a couple who met and got married immediately. However, it turned out that this couple was unfortunately split up for thirty years before they found each other again.

Peter said that when he was deployed in Vietnam for three years, he carried a picture of Jacqueline every day. He said that whenever he was having a rough day, he would just look at the picture and immediately feel better. Jacqueline on the other hand had gotten into a bad marriage with another man and was deeply unhappy. She said that the minute everything ended, she knew the only person in the world who she felt loved her was Peter. When she called him, their love was immediately rekindled even after thirty years without contact.

I think this is a beautiful story and it deserves to be shared with many people because it shows true love. Even after thirty years of being apart, they are still just as attracted to each other as they were when they first met. I hope to meet someone like this in my future.

2. “Does it bother you to think of home?”

http://storycorps.org/listen/stories/sarah-and-joshua-littman-2/

This story interested me because I saw that it was about a boy with asperger’s syndrome. My cousin has this syndrome as well. There are different degrees of aspergers so it was hard for me to tell which degree the young man in this story had. He sounded like he didn’t have it as much as some kids that I know.

One part of this story that I absolutely loved was his mother. His mother had the sweetest, wisest, most encouraging personality I have seen in a long time. In fact, she reminded me a lot of my own mother.  I thought that this young man would most likely be very lost without his mother. In the story as she is giving him advice, you can see that she pushes him to be his best, but gives him a lot of space so she doesn’t stress him out. This, in my opinion is a real gift and most parents don’t have it.

I thought it was interesting how he talked about not enjoying college and it made me wonder what aspects of college he didn’t enjoy. I wonder if it was purely the schooling that he didn’t like or if there were some social aspects of college that bothered him too. I think that kids can be cruel to other children with this disability because most kids don’t understand it and how it works.