Let's start with a laugh. Because the rest of this exercise aint no joke
I think people falling is funny. It’s a quick cheap laugh. Like a fart joke or a dog getting its head stuck in the trash can. LOL that person ate it. I'm that person and I have always been that person. It's a knee jerk being a jerk reaction. Mama tried to fix me early on but alas the instinct was too strong. Buuuuuuut if I give it 2 seconds of empathetic thinking I’m the ass here not Joe Blow McClumsey. I am the one making light of someone getting hurt. I consciously or unconsciously am making the choice to separate myself as better than that person on the floor.
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| If it's not a human can I still laugh? |
Next up in my understanding of the problem is the middle school stage of development. I fall and get laughed at. I feel the pain of the injury and the insult. It’s embarrassing especially when it’s in front of people I want to like me. In my old age I can say “Self, You fell. Everyone falls. Humans aren’t stable. Entropy comes for us all” But 10 ish years ago I would have taken that embarrassment and let it run the show. “What kind of person falls! Successful people never fall! I’m not going back there ever again!” And I would place my hand on my fevered brow and collapse onto the nearest fainting couch.
You know. For attention.
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| Me age 18. This peak cool for me. I will never be as cool as I am standing there with a giant gold ball. Yet all I can remember is being horribly self conscious and feeling like an imposter. |
Finally we have what I hope is the last version of my feels. Because if there is more I won't leave my house ever again. My kid falls. People laugh at my kid. My baby is getting laughed at for something that can’t be easily fixed. I can’t go out and buy him the cool shoes so he will fit in.
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| Take an intense eye contact look at this beautiful human. Take responsibility for your thoughts and actions towards him. I do. |
Nice people either ask if they can help or at least avert their eyes. Medium people whisper laugh to someone else but I can totally tell it’s about us. Horrible people ask me or Cal “What is wrong with you?! Why are you like this?!” Usually as they shuffle away they mumble something vague about vaccines or kids these days having no discipline. That depends on what school of thought they prescribe to.
Finally the worst one. The one that keeps me up at night and makes me hyperventilate. Is the “That kid is retarded!” It’s happened. It happens a lot. More so in Oklahoma than in Oregon.
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| #45 Does not take responsibility for his thoughts and actions. |
Well how I feel about this now.
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| Oh hell no. |
Calvin doesn't really "voice" an opinion yet. I can tell he gets embarrassed about the differences between him and his peers especially with this round of surgery, wheelchair, walking casts, walking boots and general openly struggling to move. There was no way to take that bullet for him. Surgery meant breaking something down in the hopes that it would be better eventually. Publicly. With everyone staring at him wherever he went. Everyone would comment. Today we got about 5 comments and a billion looks just in the walk from the car to his classroom. It's been 9 weeks of that.
If you have any effective ways to talk to someone who doesn't want to talk and or doesn't have the vocabulary to talk about abstract ideas I am all ears. For real. Someone help me with this.
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