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Sightings
Written by John on Thursday, February 8, 2007
A couple early "sightings" of people with disabilities seem to have had impact, an amputee woman in a skirt, a high heel, crutches and one leg missing; somebody in a wheelchair, with both legs in long braces; a kid at school with an artificial leg and another with a hearing aid or aids. All these would be from about age 5 to 7 and, obviously, are just snippets of memory but have been with me all my life.
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3 Comments
2 On 16 July, 2007, Sean said:
Thanks Lucien,
Interestingly enough, studies have shown that disability awareness of the type you describe (putting people in a wheelchair, or with blindfolds, etc) is actually counter productive, because people end up feeling sorry for folks with disabilities… Interesting that you report feeling that, partly :)
Hmmm. That could very well be what the majority of people walking away from that thought. I do believe that being fully dependent is an awful thing. Can’t push the wheelchair where you want it to go, can’t see properly, can’t sit up and stay up, no dexterity, eat baby food because you can’t chew, can’t talk coherently, can barely hear well enough even with hearing aids. I saw how he went about his business: he didn’t, not really. His caretaker did most everything. But, I still wanted to be him, in some ways. Ways like the wheelchair, no leg control, maybe a little deaf (embarrassing side note: the diaper). Now that I think about it, he might have had multiple sclerosis or something like that. Very sobering.
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1 On 16 July, 2007, Lucien said:
My earliest sighting was when I was very young, maybe 5. I went to school at Collier Elem in Tucson, and there was this boy who had multiple disabilities who needed a wheelchair. It just happened to be that, in order for us to be more understanding of him, the staff had every class in the school have a short tour. That was my first awareness of limited muscle control, semi-blindness, full dependency of a caretaker, and others. We had to wear a mask-thing covering our vision (it offered a very fuzzy look), and were seat belted in an odd fashion (like the kind in some baby car chairs, 2 straps going down connected between the legs at the groin), as well as our feet strapped to the footrests. After it happened, I was trying to pick out the different feelings I had. I felt sorry for him, but at the same time, wanted to experience it again and again. I wanted to be like that, even before I knew what it was I was sitting in, what it was called to not be able to see properly. Well, there’s my (not-so) brief first sighting.