【正文】 and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, amp。quot。Weamp。39。ve got an unexpected baby boy。 do you want him?amp。quot。 They said, amp。quot。Of course.amp。quot。 My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.
　　第一個(gè)故事，是關(guān)于人生中的點(diǎn)點(diǎn)滴滴怎么串連在一起。我在里德學(xué)院
　　(Reedcollege)待了六個(gè)月就辦休學(xué)了。到我退學(xué)前，一共休學(xué)了十八個(gè)月。那么，我為什么休學(xué)？
　　這得從我出生前講起。我的親生母親當(dāng)時(shí)是個(gè)研究生，年輕未婚媽媽，她決定讓別人收養(yǎng)我。她強(qiáng)烈覺(jué)得應(yīng)該讓有大學(xué)畢業(yè)的人收養(yǎng)我，所以我出生時(shí)，她就準(zhǔn)備讓我被一對(duì)律師夫婦收養(yǎng)。但是這對(duì)夫妻到了最后一刻反悔了，他們想收養(yǎng)女孩。
　　所以在等待收養(yǎng)名單上的一對(duì)夫妻，我的養(yǎng)父母，在一天半夜里接到一通電話，問(wèn)他們有一名意外出生的男孩，你們要認(rèn)養(yǎng)他嗎？而他們的回答是當(dāng)然要。后來(lái)，我的生母發(fā)現(xiàn)，我現(xiàn)在的媽媽從來(lái)沒(méi)有大學(xué)畢業(yè)，我現(xiàn)在的爸爸則連高中畢業(yè)也沒(méi)有。她拒絕在認(rèn)養(yǎng)文件上做最后簽字。直到幾個(gè)月后，我的養(yǎng)父母同意將來(lái)一定會(huì)讓我上大學(xué)，她才軟化態(tài)度。
　　And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my workingclass parentsamp。39。 savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldnamp。39。t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.
　　十七年后，我上大學(xué)了。但是當(dāng)時(shí)我無(wú)知選了一所學(xué)費(fèi)幾乎跟史丹佛一樣貴的大學(xué)，我那工人階級(jí)的父母所有積蓄都花在我的學(xué)費(fèi)上。六個(gè)月后，我看不出念這
　　個(gè)書的價(jià)值何在。那時(shí)候，我不知道這輩子要干什么，也不知道念大學(xué)能對(duì)我有什么幫助，而且我為了念這個(gè)書，花光了我父母這輩子的所有積蓄。
　　So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didnamp。39。t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
　　所以我決定休學(xué)，相信船到橋頭自然直。當(dāng)時(shí)這個(gè)決定看來(lái)相當(dāng)可怕，可是現(xiàn)在看來(lái)，那是我這輩子做過(guò)最好的決定之一。當(dāng)我休學(xué)之后，我再也不用上我沒(méi)興趣的必修課，把時(shí)間拿去聽(tīng)那些我有興趣的課。
　　It wasnamp。39。t all romantic. I didnamp。39。t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friendsamp。39。 rooms. I returned coke bottles for the five cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
　　Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didnamp。39。t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter binations, about what makes great
　　typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science canamp。39。t capture, and I found it fascinating.
　　這一點(diǎn)也不浪漫。我沒(méi)有宿舍，所以我睡在友人家里的地板上，靠著回收可樂(lè)空罐的五先令退費(fèi)買吃的，每個(gè)星期天晚上得走七哩的路繞過(guò)大半個(gè)鎮(zhèn)去印度教的HareKrishna神廟吃頓好料。我喜歡HareKrishna神廟的好料。追尋我的好奇與直覺(jué)，我所駐足的大部分事物，后來(lái)看來(lái)都成了無(wú)價(jià)之寶。舉例來(lái)說(shuō)：當(dāng)時(shí)里德學(xué)院有著大概是全國(guó)最好的書法指導(dǎo)。在整個(gè)校園內(nèi)的每一張海報(bào)上，每個(gè)抽屜的標(biāo)簽上，都是美麗的手寫字。因?yàn)槲倚輰W(xué)了，可以不照正常選課程序來(lái)，所以我跑去學(xué)書法。我學(xué)了serif與sanserif字體，學(xué)到在不同字母組合間變更字間距，學(xué)到活版印刷偉大的地方。書法的美好、歷史感與藝術(shù)感是科學(xué)所無(wú)法捕捉的，我覺(jué)得那很迷人。
　　None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh puter, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first puter with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the amp。quot。Macamp。quot。 would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, itamp。39。s likely that no personal puter would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal puters might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.