SSAT日积月累(11月18日)

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"They Said I Couldn't"
——Six stories of people who wouldn't give up(2)
Dumb Kids Can't Jump
"Too dumb. You'll never graduate from high
school," his elementary school teacher told seven-year-old Adam
Zimmerman. Sure enough, he "failed" and was held back a
grade.
Being left behind by friends made him feel like "trash." But his
teacher's cutting comment changed his life. It transformed a kid
with dyslexia into a person driven to succeed.
"Just because one person says something, don't take their word,"
his mother told him. "Go out and prove them wrong. It's not about
the disability; it's what you do about it."
Zimmerman did graduate from high school, and at 5'7" he excelled in
two sports he was considered too small for: basketball and
volleyball. He was MVP and All Conference in both.
That still wasn't enough to earn him a big-time college
scholarship. So he went to a Division II school and worked on his
game. And though a coach told him he'd never be a Division I
basketball player, in his sophomore year he transferred to Marshall
University in West Virginia, a Division I school. And he practiced
and practiced. The following year he made the team as a walk-on
player.
This May, the dumb kid who was too short graduated with a degree in
sports management and marketing.
When he thinks back to that grade school teacher, he says, "I thank
her for saying that. It's unbelievable how a person's words can
stick in the back of your mind and push you to be more than what
they say you can be."
"There's Gotta Be a Better Way"
Joy Mangano was 33 and divorced, had three
kids under age 7, and was barely keeping up payments on her small
two-bedroom home by working extra weekend hours as a
waitress.
"There were times when I would lie in bed and think, I don't know
how I'm going to pay that bill," Mangano says.
But she had a knack for seeing the obvious. She knew firsthand how
hard it was to mop the floor. "I was tired of bending down, putting
my hands in dirty water, wringing out a mop," Mangano says. "So, I
said, 'There's gotta be a better way.' "
How about a "self-wringing" mop? She designed a distinctive tool
you could twist in two directions at once, and still keep your
hands clean and dry. She set out to sell it, first a few at flea
markets.
Then Mangano met with the media. But would couch potatoes buy a
mop? The experts on shopping TV were less than certain. They gave
it a try, and it failed. Mangano was sure it would sell if they'd
let her do the on-camera demonstration. "Brave little me. I said,
'Get me on that stage, and I will sell this mop because it's a
great item.' "
So QVC took a chance on her. "I got onstage and the phones went
crazy. We sold every mop in minutes."
Today she's president of Ingenious Designs, a multimillion-dollar
company, and one of the stars of HSN, the Home Shopping Network.
Talking about her household inventions is "as natural for me as it
is for a parent to talk about their child," Mangano says.
Today one of her favorite products is Huggable Hangers. The thin,
space-saving implements are the most successful gadget ever sold on
HSN, with 100 million hanging out there in closets across the
country. Of course, you couldn't possibly sell hangers on
TV.