Michael Lewis, Author of “The Blindside”:

“One of the things that was striking to me was that Michael Oher who’s six foot six 325 pounds  at the age of 16 and runs a 4.9 forty (yard dash) is already someone that people with some certainity can say that’s and NFL player.

Michael Oher spent the first 15 years of his life foraging for food and foraging for rooms to sleep in one of the poorest neighborhoods in America in inner city Memphis.  It just so happens that he talked his way into someone’s house sleeping on the floor.  When the father in that house decides to take his own son to this Christian school on the outskirts of town and try to enroll him there and since Michael just happens to be living with him, he decides to take Michael too.

Serendipiticly Michael ends up attending this Christian school the Christian school realizes that they made a huge mistake because he is a sophmore in high school and he can’t read.  He actually basically has never been in a classroom.

In his class, there just so happens to be an adorable 15 year old girl named Collins Tuohy who goes home and tells her father about this odd huge guy who has joined their class.  Everybody’s terrified of him because he doesn’t say a word to anybody.  He just wonders the halls.

Sean Tuohy, Collin’s father, makes an effort to get to know Michael.  He realizes that Michael is hungry all day because to the extent that he has gone to school its been public school and public school gives you lunch for free and Michael has no money to buy lunch.  So Sean starts buying him lunch and one day…it’s actually during Thanksgiving break and it’s snowing in Memphis…Sean and Leigh Anne are driving down the street they see Michael get off a city bus in front of them in the snow wearing shorts and a T-shirt and nothing else.  Sean points to him and says, “That’s that kid that Collins has been talking about in her class”  and Leigh Anne tells him to pull over.

They ask him what he is doing and he says that he is going to the school gym.  They say that there is nothing going on in the school gym.  He says, “Yeah I know but they got heat there and I thought that I could get warm”.

That is when they realize that he is sleeping out in the streets.  And Leigh Anne Tuohy gets very upset that he is in this condition and she says get in the car.  She takes Michael shopping for clothes and she realizes that there are no clothes in Memphis that fit him.  She ends up sending his dimensions to a friend who plays on the Washington Redskins…he’s a quarterback, Patrick Ramsey… and says here, get some hand-me-downs from some of your linemen because I can’t find anything that fits him.  Ransey calls her back and says that you must have got the dimensions wrong because we don’t have anyone here that is that size.  Of course she had got the dimensions right.

She says that Ok this is my problem I am going to take over.  She brings in tutors and brings him into their house and 6 months later she’s got him reading…she’s got him funtioning at school…she’s got him on the football team…and she’s got a new member of her household!  I mean there is no where else for him to go.  So he becomes, very gradually, a member of their  family and a year later they end up adopting him.

One of the things that has been astonishing for me to watch is Michael’s intellectual developement because everyone was focused on his athletic ability but even more remarkable in a way is the developement of his brain.  Because it is generally believed that if you take a 15 year old kid who has been completely unnurtured and can’t read and write it’s too late.  By his senior year he had made the honor roll at the Christian school.  He made the Dean’s List at Ole Miss…his brain is awakened in some way and it has done it at a surprisingly late age.  And contemporanius with this is his awakening of his sense of self!”

Congratulations to Sandra Bullock for winning the Oscar for her lead role in “The Blind Side” movie!  She was my pick to win and I am so glad that she won as she is a great actress and played the part like she was born to it.

Filed under: Michael Oher

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