This week we continue our series of episodes on my experiences growing up in a special education school.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 20 of Contemplating Life.

This week we continue our series of episodes on my experiences growing up in a special education school.

As we contemplate life, sometimes it seems like a game of chess. In order to succeed, you have to plan ahead. Along the way, there are gains and losses. Loss is a normal part of life. We have to experience it. It’s unavoidable. The interesting thing about chess is that you can lose every piece on the board except for the king. The king is never removed from the board. When you attack the king, he is in check. If there is no escape from that check, you call checkmate and the game ends. Sometimes a player will ceremoniously tip over the king especially if the player resigns. But you never experience the loss of the king.

Similarly in life, we experience the death of others but when we die, the game is over. As a person of faith I hope for an afterlife in which I can look back at my life but it isn’t guaranteed. Even if there is an afterlife, the game of life will be over.

This is a story of loss. Of lost love. Of lost friends. Of lost opportunities. But the game goes on.

When we last left our intrepid hero, me, I had finally gotten the attention of my first love Rose Shewman. We met the next day in the back of the physical therapy department and agreed we were officially a couple. We were going steady.

Unfortunately, we were almost as clueless at age 13 about what it meant to be boyfriend and girlfriend as I was with Cheryl at age 5. We were going steady but we were going steadily nowhere We talked on the phone when we got home many times but I didn’t have a phone in my room so there wasn’t much privacy. We would spend every free moment together at school and would occasionally hold hands going down the hallway side-by-side. We would sneak away for long chats in the therapy room. A door at the back of the therapy department led to a balcony porch. One day we snuck out there with the intention of kissing. Although we were completely alone, she was scared someone would come looking for us, find us on the porch, and catch us at a bad moment. She chickened out and we headed back to class. I said to myself, “We probably blew it. Now we might never get a chance to kiss.”

Unfortunately, that was a prophetic statement. After about three weeks she dumped me. In a last-ditch effort over the phone, I tried to get her to change her mind. I was just about to tell her I loved her but my mom walked by and I couldn’t do it in front of her.

The Beatles’ song “Yesterday” became my theme song.

Again, the only thing that comforted me was the fact that there were no other guys in the picture. I kept hoping that someday things would turn around and she would take me back. We didn’t have yearbooks in junior high but we had a class photo with a cardboard frame and cover. We all signed each other’s photo covers with farewell messages. Several of the ambulatory students such as Ted Hayes and Greg Whitney were going on to real high schools. On Rose’s class photo, I wrote, “See you next year to try again.”

In response, she signed my photo, “Don’t try again. You’ll never succeed.”

My dad tried to comfort me with the old adage, “Girls are like streetcars, if you miss one, another one comes along in a few minutes.”

“They don’t make streetcars anymore. People ride buses.”

“Okay, smart ass. Then buses.”

“And how many buses are wheelchair accessible?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

Throughout junior high and high school, I also suffered other devastating losses.

In sixth grade, they changed the policy that everyone had to take an afternoon nap. Instead, they purchased a bunch of board games and we had a sort of indoor recess for handicapped kids. We played chess, checkers, Stratego, and some other games I don’t remember the name of. I had been playing chess since third grade. I wasn’t any good because I didn’t have anyone good to play against. There were a couple of people in junior high that played but I beat them fairly regularly and they didn’t particularly like losing all the time. I probably wasn’t a very gracious winner.

There was an eighth grader named Terry Johnson who was at the time the smartest kid I had ever met. Probably the only kid approximately my age who was a real academic rival. I taught him how to play chess and three weeks later he was beating me consistently. When he graduated from junior high and I moved up to seventh grade, that gave me back my self-proclaimed title as chess champion of the junior high.

When I got to high school, we didn’t play chess anymore but we were still good friends. He got straight A’s throughout the entire 4 years of high school and earned an academic letter sweater which he wore with great pride. Sadly, high school graduation was the end for him. He never went on to college or attempted to find employment. He died of pneumonia about six months after graduation – just two weeks before Christmas. I took it really hard. I concluded, why should I bust my ass to get straight A’s when you can goof off, hang out with the bad boys, have fun, and still get B’s and C’s?

Back in episode 11, I spoke about how his loss affected my relationship with God.

Terry had the most common kind of muscular dystrophy called Duchenne muscular dystrophy as did many of my other friends from school. They started out walking when they were young but lost that ability around age 6-7. I knew that I had something different. I had never walked so theoretically one would think whatever I had was worse than the most common type of MD. That’s why the doctors told my parents when I was first non-diagnosed that I wouldn’t live very long.

In my mind, Terry had died very young but what I didn’t know was that the average life expectancy at that time for someone with Duchenne was probably 25. None of my friends with Duchenne MD ever saw age 30. I think Gene Storms died at about 16 or 17 but we were not very close. Calvin Brandon and Wayman Glass survived until their late 20s. All had Deschene MD.

Mom used to do lots of volunteer work for the Marion County Muscular Dystrophy Foundation. She would always hear when one of the MD kids (or rather young adults) would die. If I knew them, she would come to me and tell me about it. I tried unsuccessfully to become numb to it. I never went to any of their funerals. I didn’t like funerals anyway and it was too much to go to one of them.

One day when I was perhaps age 32, Mom came to me and said, “Kelly Garrison died.” He was about five or six years younger than me. He had Duchenne MD. I didn’t know him well but I knew of him.

I said, “Well… I’m next.”

She immediately went into an angry tirade laced with, “How can you say that? You don’t know that? You’ve never been one to give up!”

When she wound down, I calmly added, “I’m still next.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because there aren’t any left. Of all the people who had some sort of muscular dystrophy that I knew from school, they are all dead. Kelly was the last one. I could live another 40 years but I’ll still be next because there just aren’t anymore.”

We both tried not to cry. That was about 35 years ago.

Fate robbed me of another chess partner.

When I was in eighth grade, we got a new girl in seventh grade named Heidi. She was in a wheelchair but I didn’t know what was wrong with her. She was extremely shy and quiet. I figured she would eventually warm up the way Rose had. The teachers found out she played chess and so they suggested I try to get her to open up a little bit by challenging her to a game. She played pretty well but she didn’t take care of her queen. I would get some sort of a fork move on her, capture her queen, and after that, she didn’t have a chance. A couple of times I took it a bit easy on her. When she would make a mistake, I would ask, “Are you sure you want to do that?” I would let her take back the move. But only if she made an obvious blunder. If she would get caught in a trap that I set then I would take the win.

One day, Mr. Kohl called me aside. “How have the chess games been going with Heidi?”

“Okay, she’s pretty good except she doesn’t protect her queen.”

“I have a favor to ask you. I need you to let her win now and then.”

I laughed in his face. “You can’t be serious. I will coach her as best I can but I’m not taking a dive. Especially against a girl. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

“You will do it.” It wasn’t a threat. He spoke from confidence.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I’m not telling you to do it as your teacher. I’m asking you as a personal favor to me.”

Well fuck. He had me. Since he put it that way… I was going to do it but the best I could give him at that moment was to say I would think about it.

I didn’t get a chance to play with her for a couple of days. I made up my mind I would go easier on her. She was going to have to win but I was going to just play a mild defense. I might even “accidentally” sacrifice a piece. Then she didn’t show up to school for two weeks. One day, Mr. Kohl called me aside, “Did you ever get a chance to play against Heidi again after we talked?”

“No. She hasn’t been here in days. I was going to go easy on her but I never got the chance.”

He then explained. Heidi had cancer all along. She was terminal. She knew it and all of the teachers knew it but none of us kids. She only came to school to have something to do to live out her days. He told me she had died. I never got a chance to give her a game.

You always think you will have time to do nice things or to apologize. But you can’t be sure.

Dan Moran was in high school with me at Roberts. He had chronic kidney disease. One day we got into a stupid argument over something. I don’t recall what it was. On the way home on the school bus that day I decided to apologize the next day. He didn’t show up the next day. Or the day after that. A week later he was dead at age 16.

People say, “Don’t hold a grudge.”

I rewrote that adage after Dan died. I now say, “Don’t hold a grudge any longer than you can hold your breath. That breath might be your last.”

One more tearjerker for you just to get them all out of the way. This story is going to take a lot of backstory but it’s a backstory I was going to tell you eventually anyway so now is as good of a time as any.

As I will tell in more detail in future episodes, for my sophomore through senior years of high school I went half a day to Roberts School and the other half of the day at my local neighborhood high school Northwest High School. The wheelchair bus from Roberts would pick me up in the morning and drive me to Roberts where I would take a couple of classes that were only offered upstairs at Northwest which was inaccessible. Then after lunch, Mom would pick me up and drive me to Northwest for afternoon classes. As the bus came back through the neighborhood to drop off my friend Mark who lived just around the corner from me, it would stop by Northwest, pick me up, and bring me half a mile home.

The high school at Roberts was a joke. There were only about 20-25 students for the entire high school program. We had only two teachers. Mr. Sam Price taught English, biology, and social studies. Mrs.Harriet Bartlett taught math, bookkeeping, and French. Those teachers tried to teach an entire high school curriculum for all four years of high school. To get all of that in, they divided the day into 12 periods of 30 minutes each. Each class would consist of 2-5 students who sat around a table at the front of the room while the teacher taught. The rest of us sat around the perimeter of the room at desks facing the wall. If you took five courses plus lunch that meant you had 6 of the 30-minute class periods with nothing to do except study and try to stay out of trouble.

Scheduling all that, especially arranging it so that all of my classes were in the morning was quite a challenge. Lunch at Roberts was served in three shifts. Kindergarten through about third grade went first. Grades 4-5 plus the special ed multiply handicapped class (kids with both physical and intellectual disabilities) went second shift. Junior high went third. High school was spread out among all three periods to make the schedule work.

During my sophomore year, Rose and I were the only high school kids who ate in the first lunch period with the little kids. We had a table all to ourselves. We would eat lunch quickly and then convince the second-grade teacher who was the lunch monitor that we had permission to leave early, go back upstairs, and study.

We sort of did have permission but we were expected to go to Mrs. Bartlett’s room because Mr. Price was at lunch himself. We would sneak off to the empty classroom. We weren’t doing anything wrong. Mostly we just sat and did homework or would talk but it was nice to have a quiet place to hang out without having another class going on in the same room. Sometimes we would get to laughing too loud. Bartlett would hear us, come over next door, and angrily order us back to her classroom where we belonged.

When we were there alone together, we finally began developing that friendship that she said she always wanted from me. I learned more about her life story. She was the youngest of nine children in a large Catholic family. Her father had been a firefighter but had died from alcoholism. Her disability was caused by a rare genetic neurological disease called Frederick’s Ataxia – F.A. for short. Two of her older brothers had it. The older one was dead. The other one lived with her and her mom.

She had been able to walk up until about sixth grade. By seventh grade, she had to use a wheelchair. She had been attending Saint Teresa of the Little Flower Catholic School which was just down the street from her house. Upstairs at the school was inaccessible. She would try climbing out of her wheelchair and either climb the stairs holding onto the railing with help from someone or she would get out of the chair and she tried to crawl up the steps while someone carried her chair up. It just didn’t work out. That’s when she transferred to Roberts School halfway through seventh grade and I fell in love with her.

When she came to Roberts, she has only been in a wheelchair for a few months. She was still dealing with the trauma of recognizing what was ahead of her. That’s why she was so withdrawn when she first came to Roberts. Even though she had brothers with the same thing, moving to Roberts made it suddenly real to her. None of the rest of us realized what she was going through back then. All of us had spent many more years or perhaps our entire lives getting adjusted to life with a disability.

Having a boyfriend was the last thing on her mind back then. She confessed her letter to me in seventh grade had been a lie. She never had a boyfriend from her neighborhood. She also somewhat apologized for her snarky conclusion of the letter which concluded, “So what if I am cute?” She said, “I was really nasty to you back then wasn’t I?”

“Yeah, you were. My heart’s still broken. But you’re still cute.”

“Yes, I am. And we’re still going to be just friends.”

That friendship grew even deeper one day when we were sitting alone in Mr. Price’s room after lunch. We were actually studying for a change and not joking around. I was doing geometry and Rose was working on a biology assignment. At Roberts, there was no lab for biology. It was purely a textbook-only course. I was taking biology at Northwest. The difference between the two courses was like night and day. That we had biology lab every other day at Northwest. We dissected an earthworm, a frog, and a fetal pig. That’s one of the reasons I got out of Roberts half a day to go to Northwest – so I could take real science classes.

Anyway, our desks were across the room from each other facing one another. I happened to look up and Rose was just sitting there quietly with tears running down her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s this stupid biology assignment Price gave us. We have to write a report about our own disability. Price brought in this damned medical reference book.” There was a large book about 4 inches thick that looked like an unabridged dictionary. She gave it an angry shove across the desk. She composed herself a bit and said, “They’ve got less than a full column about F.A. They hardly have anything to say about me. The stuff they say, I’ve seen it in my brothers and I’m living through it. But the thing that got me…” She started crying again… “…was the last sentence. It just says real coldly matter-of-fact, ‘Usually fatal by age 30’” She slammed the book shut and continued to cry.

I knew her oldest brother was dead and the other one was in worse shape than she was. It just didn’t sink in for her until that moment what that meant for her. Or for me either. Terry Johnson, Gene Storms, and Dan Moran were still a year or two from dying. I had never gotten close to Heidi.

We both sat there and just cried for about five minutes. I wanted to go over and hug her but even though I had some use of my arms in those days, I couldn’t reach up. The best I would’ve been able to do is pull up alongside her and invite her to hug me but that wouldn’t have helped. I wasn’t the one who needed comforting. So we just set there across the room from each other and cried. She could see I was crying too. I think that was the best we could do under the circumstances.

After a while, she said, “30 years isn’t enough.”

“No’s, it isn’t.”

She left for the restroom. I wiped my eyes and went over to Mrs. Bartlett’s room.

You will hear much more about Rose in future episodes but let me spoil some of it for you so we don’t end this episode on a total downer. After graduating high school, I occasionally heard from Rose but I didn’t see her again until a school reunion in 1986 when we were each just short of our 30th birthdays. She was happily married to the nephew of one of our classmates. A couple of years later, my cousin Nancy ran into her when they shared a ride on a city wheelchair bus. Rose was taking her newborn baby for a checkup at the doctor.

According to records I found on ancestry websites, Rose Ellen Figley (née Shewman) born September 5, 1955, died October 29, 1993, at the age of 38 years, 1 month, 24 days.

Thirty wasn’t enough. But given the circumstances maybe 38 was.

For my next couple of episodes, I’m going to do something a little different. I’ve mentioned in passing a couple of times that I wrote an award-winning article that was published in the September 1987 issue of Indianapolis Monthly Magazine. The autobiographical piece “The Reunion” is a memoir of many of my experiences at Roberts School that was inspired by an all-school reunion of Roberts alumni that was held in May 1986 on the occasion of the closing of Roberts School. Although I intend to keep the majority of this podcast to be newly written original material, I thought it might be nice to read the story for you. So, next week I will begin by telling you the story of how I wrote the article and I will read about half of it. The following week I will finish the story and talk about what happened afterward.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. It’s not that I’m desperate for money, but a little extra income sure could help.

Many thanks to my Patreon supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

This week we continue our series of episodes on my experiences growing up in a special education school. We talk about my experiences moving from 5th to 6th grades and my first genuine interest in girls.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 19 of Contemplating Life.

This week we continue our series of episodes on my experiences growing up in a special education school. We talk about my experiences moving from 5th to 6th grades and my first genuine interest in girls.

We’ve talked in previous episodes about my so-called girlfriends in kindergarten and later in fourth grade but at that young age, I really had no idea what it meant to have a girlfriend or to be a boyfriend. However, at the early age of 10, it began to get real. Well… As real as it can get for a 10-year-old. A girl named Lily had a genuine crush on me.

She was in Robert’s school because she had a heart condition. As I explained in previous episodes, many of the kids didn’t really need to be in a special ed school. Anything that was serious enough to get you out of gym class or to restrict your activities on the playground would get you shipped off to the handicapped ghetto.

She would shower attention on me carrying books, helping me with my coat, and before I had my power wheelchair she would push me to and from lunch. I suspect she was a bit disappointed that I got the power chair because in some ways it put her out of a job. Still, she could see how happy I was to have it.

How bad did bad Lily crush on me? She would take a piece of paper and practice writing her name as “Lily Young”. She showed me a math paper that she “accidentally” wrote “Lily Young” at the top of it. She said she came very close to turning it in before she caught the mistake.

I wasn’t exactly smitten with her but I really did like her. She was reasonably cute and at age 11 was starting to develop a figure although she was a little bit plump. Most of all, I enjoyed the attention she gave me and did what I could to encourage it.

We never held hands or talked about kissing let alone trying to do it. I don’t recall talking to her on the phone although a couple of years later she called me just to see how I was doing so we must have exchanged phone numbers.

I’m pretty sure that by the end of the school year, she already knew she would attend regular school the following year. I would miss having her around and all the attention that she gave me but I wasn’t exactly heartbroken.

Lots of kids who didn’t belong in Roberts left after fifth grade. Grades 6-8 were considered junior high which today would probably be called “middle school”. Although Roberts’ junior high program wasn’t half bad, it had nowhere near the opportunities that a regular school would have.

The transition from 5th to 6th grade also meant moving upstairs. By then, I had mastered navigating the big ramp and enjoyed going up and down every day. It was no longer the terrifying experience that it had been that first time down.

In junior high, we had a homeroom where we had English which included spelling, grammar, and literature. The sixth-grade homeroom teacher Mr. Ron Kohl taught social studies for all three grades. The seventh-grade teacher Mrs. Irene McBurnie taught science and music. The eighth-grade teacher Miss Meta Fogas taught math. We shared a shop teacher and home economics teacher with the high school. There was an art teacher who was in the building one or two days a week and would rotate with other schools.

We would spend most of the day in our homeroom but would rotate to other rooms for science, music, or math. It probably would’ve been easier to just have the teachers switch rooms and leave all of us in the room we started in but something about the idea of switching from classroom to classroom made it feel more like a regular school. Also, we did have a small amount of lab equipment in the seventh-grade science room and of course, we had to switch rooms for shop and home ec.

In shop class, we did some woodworking projects like making lamps or wall decorations, and we spent some time learning mechanical drawing which was fun. If we had had CAD software in those days I might have taken up drafting or architecture as a career. I couldn’t handle any drawing bigger than an ordinary sheet of paper so a full-size blueprint would’ve been out of my capability. The girls did cooking and sewing.

My sixth-grade homeroom teacher Mr. Kohl was a jolly fellow who stood about 5 feet tall and was totally bald. He was a lot of fun but if you got in trouble too often he could be really tough. One time when the class had been getting especially rowdy he imposed on us what he called “The Week” in which he was no more Mr. Nice Guy. We got the message. We could have fun in his class but there were limits and he could take away all of the fun at a minute’s notice.

Like Miss Holmes and Mr. Wright in the third and fourth grades, he recognized how bright I was and I quickly became his favorite. Of course, he also realized how lazy I was and was quick to give me those speeches about not living up to my potential, etc., etc. He was the teacher I spoke of earlier who tried to trick me into joining the spelling bee by appealing to my competitive nature and ego about my intellect. It didn’t work.

I had acquired a passion for politics from my mother and that passion was further fueled by his social studies class. This was 1966-69 so it was an exciting time with the height of the Vietnam War and all of the social unrest regarding that as well as the civil rights movement.

He said that someone once asked him if segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace ever died would he go to spit on his grave? He replied, “I promised myself when I was in the Army I would never stand in line again.” He had been stationed in Germany but only after the end of World War II. He still had lots of stories about his time in Europe in the service.

I remember how surprised he was when President Johnson announced, “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Mr. Kohl had assured us that Johnson would be president again and we teased him pretty hard the day after LBJ announced he was out.

Although Mr. Kohl refused to identify as Democrat or Republican, it was obvious he was a liberal, especially on social justice issues. He was Catholic and probably quite pro-life. He and his wife were unable to have children so they adopted a daughter. She was about the same age as my adopted sister Carol so he and my mom shared a bond. I reconnected with him years later on Facebook but I don’t recall when he died. I doubt that he lived to see the Trump presidency but I’m certain that if he had, even if he had become more conservative, he would have been appalled by politics today and the assault on democracy.

There was something very important missing from my sixth-grade experience.

Girls.

It wasn’t just Lily who left Roberts School after fifth grade. All of the girls either moved out of town or started going to regular school. It just so happened there were no handicapped girls our age anywhere in the city of Indianapolis that particular year.

We did get some excitement for about six weeks. A girl, whose name escapes me all these years later, came to our school. She was a very attractive blonde with a great personality. She described herself as a tomboy and her evidence was that she had fallen out of a tree and broken her leg. She was only going to be in the wheelchair at Roberts for about six weeks until her leg healed. That was enough time for my friend Ted Hayes to go nuts over her but I don’t think he ever got anywhere. I and the rest of the guys were content to just tease her about whatever we could. At age 11, we still weren’t quite girl crazy yet.

Years later I was in the cafeteria at IUPUI and an absolutely stunning blonde athletic-looking nursing student walked up to me asking, “Do you remember me?” It was the tomboy from sixth grade. Unfortunately, I was sitting there talking to a girl named Ellie who you will hear much about in future episodes. If I hadn’t been with Ellie, I would have gotten the nurse’s phone number just to see what might happen. That wasn’t the only time fate sent me a potential girlfriend while I was in the middle of pursuing someone else. Sometimes I would pray, “Come on God… You give me these long droughts with no women in my life and then you send me two at once. Can’t we get better timing?”

My all-male class continued throughout sixth grade and a couple of months into seventh grade. Then we heard we were getting a new girl at last. She was a very sweet African-American girl named Donna. I think she had a heart condition or asthma or something that didn’t put her in a wheelchair. All of the black guys chased her but never got anywhere.

I think it was in February or March of seventh grade one day we were in the eighth-grade room at math class when word got around that we were getting a new girl. As I rolled into homeroom after math class and headed for my desk.

The students in wheelchairs sat at custom-built tables designed for two wheelchairs side-by-side. They had plenty of clearance underneath for wheelchair footrests and there was a shelf below the table where you could stash your books. The height was perfect for someone sitting in a wheelchair. We had an odd number of wheelchair students and considering I was continuing my role as teacher’s pet, I was awarded the privilege of an entire desk to myself.

The new girl was sitting there in her wheelchair at my desk.

My initial reaction was, “Oh crap no, I’m gonna have to share my desk with some girl!”

Then I saw the girl. Now it was, “Oh holy shit! I gotta make sure I sit next to this girl!”

Sitting there in front of me was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in a wheelchair. She had sandy blonde shoulder-length hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones like some Scandinavian fashion model, and a broad smile. She was wearing a pink sweater over a white blouse, a gray pleated wool skirt, white bobby socks, and penny loafers. I was totally smitten.

In addition to the normal wheelchair desks, we had ordinary school desks but the chairs were not attached. You could sit at one of them in a wheelchair although they would be a little bit low. At one point it looked like Mrs. McBurnie was going to seat her at a single desk. I spoke up immediately and insisted I didn’t mind sharing my wheelchair desk with her. Fortunately, I got my way and she was assigned to the other half of my desk.

The teacher had been talking to the girl’s mother. The teacher then introduced her to everyone as Rose Ellen Shewman. At first, I wasn’t sure if Rose Ellen was one word or two. Her mother called her Rose Ellen and when the teacher began referring to her as Rose Ellen you could see her cringe. It didn’t take long to understand she wanted to drop her middle name and be called just Rose.

She was initially quite shy which is to be expected coming to a new school and not knowing anyone. However, she wasn’t shy about answering questions in class. She was smart. I noticed she was constantly flipping to the back of the book and looking at the glossary to find answers to questions. That was something I was too lazy to do. Prideing myself in being a know-it-all, I always had the attitude that if you have to look something up, it was an admission of failure. I gave her points for being clever enough to be able to look something up before the other idiots in the class could prove their ignorance by giving a wrong answer.

It didn’t take long for all of the other guys to know that I was first in line to get her attention. I didn’t have any competition.

The question was, “What next?” How do I get her attention? How do I show my intentions? I was a clueless 12-year-old. Some suggested that a good first step was to buy her a friendship ring. That would be a challenge. I couldn’t exactly save up money from a paper route, hop on my bicycle, and ride to the store.

One day, there was about $10-$15 just lying around on top of the TV. I concluded that they had paid the paperboy with a $20 bill and this was the change. My problem was, it was sitting back too far for me to reach. I asked my sister Carol who would’ve been about 4 years old at the time to hand it to me. Then I had to figure out an excuse to get to the store. There was a discount department store called Ayr-Way on Lafayette Road that was the 1960s equivalent of K-Mart or Walmart. I knew they had a jewelry counter full of cheap costume jewelry.

Before I could hatch a plan, I got caught. My parents confronted me and asked if I took the money. I confessed. When they asked why, I said I wanted to buy a model car kit to build. I said I was going to ask them to take me to Ayr-Way to buy it. They told me if I needed money in the future, they would give it to me. They took me to the store but I didn’t have the money with me anymore. I picked out a car kit and they paid for it.

Eventually, I had a couple of bucks from my grandma and I traded that along with the promise of all my desserts at lunch for a week to my buddy Teddy. He had a cheap friendship ring that was a metal band with hearts all around it.

I wrote a mushy love letter to Rose, put it in an envelope with the ring, and handed it to her on the way out the door at the end of school on a Friday. Monday at the end of the day, she handed me a note on the way out the door. She said she didn’t want to go steady with me. She wasn’t interested. She already had a boyfriend who lived in her neighborhood. She concluded with the sentence, “So what if I am cute?”

Naturally, I was pretty crushed.

My only consolation was that once I told all the guys she already had a boyfriend, none of them tried to step in where I had failed. I always had hope that this situation would change and I would try again. Throughout the rest of seventh grade and into eighth grade I had to just bide my time.

Eventually, Rose just became another one of the gang. We all enjoyed teasing one another. I once wrote that if our desks still had inkwells like in the olden days, we would’ve been trying to dip her ponytail into it. Rose liked to show off that she could pop a wheelie in her wheelchair and balance on her rear wheels. It took a while before she realized that we enjoyed her balancing skills so much because we could see up her skirt. After that, she never did it again.

My next chance came on Valentine’s Day in eighth grade.

We always had a party on Valentine’s Day. You would buy a package of mixed Valentines and send one to everyone in your class, including guys sending to guys and girls to girls. You had to choose carefully so that the same-sex cards were more friendly than romantic. I carefully sorted through the package that my mom got for me and picked out the mushiest one for Rose.

In eighth grade, I wasn’t sharing a desk with Rose anymore. I shared one with my best buddy Miguel “Mike” Rodriguez. Rose sat at a single desk directly in front of us. At the Valentine’s party, I leaned over to Mike and whispered, “I’ve got to keep an eye on Rose. I sent her a particularly mushy one. I’ve got to see how she reacts.”

He gave me a thumbs-up and whispered back, “Good luck bro.”

Rose opened my card, read it, turned around and looked at me, and said, “Do you mean it?”

I nearly choked on my Brach’s candy conversation heart. “Huh?”

“Do you really mean it? What it says on the card?”

The obvious response would have been, “Of course, I meant it. I picked it out special just for you.”

That’s not what I said.

Instead, I said, “Uhh… I forget what it says.”

She rolled her eyes in disbelief and then held up the card so I could reread it. Satisfied that it reflected my intent as best an out-of-the-box Valentine’s card could do so. I finally said with belated confidence, “Yeah. I meant it.”

She smiled but I think mostly it was her laughing at what an idiot I was. Meanwhile, Mike is laughing so hard he’s got his head down on the table pounding his fist. I was worried he was going to fall out of his wheelchair he was laughing so hard. I probably turned the same shade of red as the icing on the heart-shaped cookies we were eating.

In our next episode, we will continue the saga of my romance with Rose and other somewhat darker stories of my school days at Roberts School.

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This week we continue our series of episodes on my experiences growing up in a special education school. We talk about my experiences in fourth and fifth grade and how I begin to develop a passion for math and science.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 17 of Contemplating Life.

This week we continue our series of episodes on my experiences growing up in a special education school. We talk about my experiences in fourth and fifth grade and how I begin to develop a passion for math and science.

When I was in third grade, Miss Holmes was assisted by a student teacher Mr. Wright. I don’t recall his first name if I ever knew it. After doing his student teaching, he was hired at Roberts School to teach fourth grade so he was already familiar with me and all of the other students.

He was a really fun guy. For social studies class, he made up some sort of play or pageant that was supposed to illustrate Native South American culture. I don’t recall if he said it was Aztec or Incan culture. I mentioned that in Miss Holmes’ class I was sort of the teacher’s favorite and that continued under Mr. Wright so I got to play the part of the tribal king. The queen was played by a girl named Rosemary. Those of you who know me, have heard me talk about a girlfriend named Rose but this was a different one.

I vaguely recall referring to Rose as my “girlfriend” but I think it was sort of along the same lines as Cheryl from kindergarten. Being in school, your family required you to have a girlfriend so I picked her. I don’t even recall if she would refer to me as her boyfriend. It may have just been someone I picked to keep my grandmother off my back asking me about girlfriends. It wasn’t that I had any particular attraction to her except that she was probably the second smartest person in the class and thus also a teacher’s favorite. She moved away after fourth grade and I never saw her again and didn’t particularly miss her. At least I don’t have any embarrassing stories to tell about insulting her disability.

Fourth grade was the first class in which we had science class. That is where I began to really get my passion for science beyond my interest in the space program which was at its height in the 1960s. We did experiments where we passed light through a prism and showed how when you stick a pencil and a glass of water, the refraction makes it look like the pencil is broken. I think we also played around with batteries, light bulbs, motors, and switches as well as electromagnets.

It was either in fourth grade or perhaps fifth grade that I began reading science fiction. The first book I read was “Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship” closely followed by “Danny Dunn and the Antigravity Paint”. I will talk more about my passion for science fiction and these books in particular in a later episode.

Beyond the science experiments and crazy plays that we acted out in Mr. Wright’s class, I also recall he was a huge fan of James Bond. This was the 1964-65 school year which saw the release of “From Russia with Love” and “Goldfinger” starring Sean Connery. I don’t know if it was Mr. Wright’s influence or I just got caught up in Bond fever but I recall I built a model car that was a James Bond Aston Martin complete with a spring-loaded ejection seat and rockets that would shoot out the back when you press a button. I remember having some deep philosophical discussions with him (to the extent a nine-year-old could) because I had difficulty with the idea that the double-O in 007 meant “license to kill.” I didn’t think even with a government license it was okay to kill somebody.

My only other memory of Mr. Wright was that he had gone to school in Terre Haute Indiana and he had us convinced that the words “Terre Haute” were Indian for “terrible smell.” It was only when I took French in high school that I learned it meant “high ground” in French.

One more very memorable thing happened in fourth grade. There was a girl named Rita Johnson in my class. She had braces on her legs and walked using “Canadian Crutches”. These are sort of like a cane that has part of it come up into a U-shaped cuff that goes around your forearm. The crutch doesn’t come all the way up to your armpit like traditional crutches.

She was walking by my desk one day and slipped and fell. The cuff around her forearm dug into her arm and cut a V-shaped slice into it about three-quarters of an inch. A flap of skin opened up from this V-cut and you could see what I thought was muscle inside her arm. I don’t know for certain that’s what I was seeing but it was definitely a deep cut through all the skin. It wasn’t just a scrape.

Like lots of kids with crutches and braces, falling down was not that unusual. She was about to attempt to get up when she looked down at her arm and saw the wound. She started screaming hysterically. They flopped the flap of skin closed, took her to the nurse’s office, wrapped it up in a bandage, and sent her back to class. I think the thing really needed stitches but she never got any. Years later when I was in my early 20s, I ran into her at a disability event and she still had a V-shaped scar on her arm. I didn’t get the opportunity to talk to her to tell her I remembered the day she got it.

Afterward, I bragged to everyone about what I saw. “It was so cool! You could actually see inside her arm!” All of the girls thought it was gross and all the guys thought it was so cool, and they were jealous that I got to see it and they didn’t.

The incident further provoked my sense of scientific curiosity. Who knows? Had I not been disabled, it might have led me to a career in medicine.

My scientific curiosity was piqued by other observations around that age. We used to go to the Lafayette Road Drive-in Movie at the corner of Lafayette Road and Georgetown Road. We had a 1959 Plymouth which had a large sloping rear window. After watching the first part of a double feature, my parents would put me in the back of the car on a large shelf above the rear seat with the window over me. I would lay there and look up at the stars and wonder about them. I knew that stars were suns and that there was no air in outer space. I recall asking my dad, “How is it possible for the stars and the sun to burn in outer space when there is no air?“ He didn’t know. I had to figure that out. It led me to an early interest in astronomy.

I always was a logical thinker. One time when we were on vacation at Lake Schaefer we were accompanied by a priest friend Father Paul Piatt. He was the second of three Father Pauls who influenced my life. He was attempting to engage me in a conversation about how God made everything and influenced everything. Somewhere in the conversation, he asked me, “Where does the wind come from?” Presumably, he wanted me to say that God made the wind blow. My answer was, “It’s caused by the trees.”

Looking back on my answer, I still think it was a brilliant deduction. I noticed that whenever the wind blew, the trees were moving back and forth. I naturally assumed that it was the motion of the trees acting like giant fans that caused the wind. I later learned this was an excellent example of the warning, “Correlation does not imply causation.” I had noticed the correlation between tree movement and wind blowing. I simply had the cause and effect backward. Still, I thought it was an ingenious observation for a young scientist.

My scientific pursuits were furthered in fifth grade under the guidance of a wonderful teacher Mrs. Beatrice Rogers. She was a heavyset African-American woman with a sparkling personality and a passion for teaching. We had all sorts of activities going on at once in her class. My favorite was a large diorama we built featuring several dinosaurs we made out of modeling clay.

The fifth-grade curriculum was the first to implement the so-called “New Math”. According to Wikipedia, this was a revolutionary, yet temporary paradigm shift in the way mathematics was taught in elementary school. It was prompted in part by the Soviet Union launching the first man-made satellite Sputnik in 1957. The belief was that Russian engineers were mathematical geniuses and that in order to compete with them in the space race, we had to raise a new generation of people who were proficient in math.

Rather than concentrate on rote memorization, the idea was to teach mathematical concepts. Kids need to understand why math was the way it was and not just memorize answers. It was designed to teach logical thinking. Among the concepts it included were Boolean logic, set theory, ideas such as intersection and union, as well as numbering systems other than base 10. It may have contributed to my inability to do simple arithmetic that I talked about last week. While most students had no use for such concepts, I was unknowingly destined for a career in computer programming. So not only did new math come to me easily, it served me well in later years.

Concepts such as intersection and union also served me well in working with 3D graphics and a graphics rendering engine I helped to develop. In 1990, I co-authored a book about computer graphics and it relied on such concepts. I also use it in my work when I use CAD software for 3D printing.

I wonder if new math would have worked better had they phased it in from first grade onwards rather than trying to implement it systemwide and trying to teach it to fifth or sixth-grade students who already had four or more years of old math education.

Given that children are learning coding at an early age, my guess is that many of the old “new math” concepts are being taught today without the negative connotation that became associated with the sudden and ill-conceived implementation of the new math curriculum in the 1960s.

The major event that happened in fifth grade was that I was given the use of a motorized wheelchair. The chair had been donated to the school. A small brass engraved tag on the side said, “In loving memory of my husband Mrs. Vern Hollingsworth.” And a date presumably of when Vern Hollingsworth died. I had heard that he was an elderly wealthy man who had purchased the wheelchair but only used it for about 6 months before he passed away.

The school allowed me to use the wheelchair in school and I could take it home over the summer as long as my parents agreed to keep up the maintenance. I will have more extensive comments about wheelchair technology in future episodes but briefly, this was an ordinary Everest and Jennings wheelchair with two 6-volt lead acid automobile batteries and two electric motors that powered the rear wheels through belts and pulleys. The rear wheels had wire spokes and narrow solid rubber tires.

In the summertime, riding around on concrete sidewalks and streets caused excessive wear on the tires and they had to be replaced quite often. Scraping into narrow doorways wreaked havoc on the thin wire spokes and Dad eventually replaced them with heavy-duty spokes. The batteries had to be replaced about once a year but they were standard 6-volt car batteries which were still in common use in the mid-1960s.

The electronics were quite primitive by modern standards of power wheelchairs. The joystick was a simple plastic knob that rested inside four micro switches set at 45° angles. When you pushed the stick straight forward, it would press 2 of the switches which would engage both motors forward. If you pushed forward and right, it would engage only the left motor. Push straight sideways and one motor would go forwards and the other would go backward. I called that maneuver a “bat-turn” after the way the famous Batmobile could turn instantaneously in the 1960s TV version of Batman.

Unlike modern power chairs, there was no proportional control. Each motor was either on or off. The physical therapist who taught me how to drive it had little or no experience with the device. She told me, “If you get into trouble, just let go of the joystick and you will stop.” She unknowingly left out the word, “eventually”. When you let go, the chair would coast a tiny bit and that was on level ground. I didn’t realize that on a ramp, it would roll on its own without power.

My misadventures in the wheelchair began on day one when I ran over Mrs. Rogers’ foot. After that, she learned to stay out of my way.

My second thrilling moment in the power wheelchair came when I tried to drive it down a large ramp that connected the first and second-floor classrooms. This episode is already way too long so I’m going to save that story for a later episode. Let’s just say my scientific mind learned a lot about physics driving a wheelchair down the ramp out of control.

I didn’t have the only power wheelchair in the school. There were two others. Nancy and Leslie Gilson were about three years and five years ahead of me respectively. The Gilson sisters were quite frail petite young ladies with a soft voice that you had to strain to hear sometimes. They both had a type of muscular dystrophy although not the common Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy because only boys get that type.

The family had purchased 4 power wheelchairs – two to use at school and another pair for use at home. They didn’t ride the school bus like the rest of us. Their chauffeur would lift them out of their home wheelchairs and put them in the limousine and drive them to school. Then he would lift them into the other power wheelchairs which were kept at the school. We always said it was a “chauffeur” and a “limousine” but none of us really knew that as a fact. It might have been their dad or older brother or friend of the family driving what was obviously a fancy car probably a Lincoln or a Cadillac but not necessarily a limousine.

Power wheelchairs in those days cost about $1000 which in today’s money would be about $30,000. The fact that the family could afford four of them made it obvious they were well-off.

The presumed wealth of the Gilson family was an illustration of the diversity of the student body at Roberts School. On one end of the spectrum, we had the Gilsons who could afford four power wheelchairs. On the other end of the spectrum was one of my classmates who didn’t come to school for a week because he had no shoes to wear. He needed expensive orthopedic shoes. When the social worker inquired why he wasn’t in school and discovered the reason, the PTA paid for a new pair of shoes. The only reason I knew about it was that my mom was president of the PTA and couldn’t keep a secret.

Roberts School had students who were black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. Rich and poor. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and atheist. Disability knows nothing of race, creed, or socioeconomic status. While we were highly segregated from the rest of the school population because of our disabilities, we were at the time the most integrated school by all other measures.

The prevailing belief that the Gilson family was well-off was confirmed when sadly Leslie passed away shortly before graduating high school. The family donated a large sum of money to buy hundreds of library books for the school. Each of them contained a foil sticker on the inside flyleaf saying “Donated in memory of Leslie Gilson.” Among the donated books were some sci-fi classics by Asimov and Clarke which I enjoyed. Her family accepted her high school diploma posthumously.

After the incident on the big ramp, even though I didn’t know either of the sisters because they were older than me, I stopped Nancy in the hall one day and asked her advice on navigating the ramp.

Everest and Jennings dominated the wheelchair market in those days and they were the only company to make power chairs. They only had one model. Even though my wheelchair was theoretically identical to those driven by the Gilson girls, for some reason they both were faster than me. We never officially “raced” but I would find an opportunity to go down the hall alongside them and lose miserably. It really made me angry I could get outrun by a couple of girls.

I never got to know Leslie at all. Nancy was only a couple of years ahead of me so we were in high school at the same time. She was quite shy yet very intelligent with a good sense of humor. She won a poetry contest for a poem that moved me greatly. I’ve got a copy of it stashed around here somewhere and I will reprint it if I ever find it.

In an award-winning magazine article I wrote in 1987 about my school experiences, I told a story about the Gilson girls that was related to me by one of the teachers at a school reunion. I got a nice note from their older brother thanking me for remembering them. He said he didn’t recall the incident I described how Nancy handled the death of her older sister yet he said he couldn’t deny it happened.

For me, it doesn’t matter if the story was true or not. It doesn’t matter if they came to school in a chauffeur-driven limousine or if it was just their dad or older brother in a fancy car. It’s an example of the famous line from the film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” which says “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

The Gilson girls were the stuff of legends.

In our next episode, we will continue the saga of my school days at Roberts School. I will tell one more story from fifth grade and then move upstairs to junior high.

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This week we continue our multi-part series about my early childhood and my journey through the special education system.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 16 of Contemplating Life.

This week we continue our multi-part series about my early childhood and my journey through the special education system.

After successfully navigating kindergarten, I proceeded through the primary grades. First and second grade were uneventful experiences. I don’t recall my teachers’ names. I was assigned a better wheelchair than the one that I had in kindergarten. The only other memorable events from that part of my life were not school related. Both of them were painful experiences that left me bruised and sore

One Sunday afternoon in the middle of winter, my family went ice skating at Geist Reservoir on the northeast side of Indianapolis. We were accompanied by my paternal grandparents. Apparently, ice skating was a family tradition that my dad enjoyed with them since his childhood. We had a small snow sled with a seat built into it. Dad lifted me into the sled and would go skating across the ice pulling me on the sled at high speed. I really enjoyed it until we hit a patch of rough ice just as we were making a turn. The sled tipped over and dumped me onto the ice. The result was a lot of sprained body parts and a black eye. I had interesting stories to tell the next day at school to explain the bruise. We never went skating again.

The other incident was at a summer camp that I believe was between my first and second grades. It was only a day camp, not overnight. It was held at a facility on the east side called the Crossroads Rehabilitation Center. That organization still exists at a different location and is now known as Easter Seals Crossroads.

Although the camp was designed to serve disabled kids, I didn’t feel like they were very well-equipped. For example, they didn’t have a handheld urinal in the restroom like the ones I used at home or at school. The janitor tried to lift me up by grabbing me under the arms and standing me in front of the toilet to try to pee. It’s the only time I ever attempted to pee standing up. Of course, my legs could not support even a tenth of my weight. It is a wonder I wasn’t injured. That would come later. The next day, Mom sent me there with a Tupperware cup to pee into.

Behind the building in a large playground area where most of the camp activities took place, they had a regular above-ground swimming pool set up. Some of the kids would be lifted out of their wheelchairs and could get into the pool. I was too afraid to allow strangers to do that. There was a wooden platform alongside the pool and a wooden ramp. They would roll me up the ramp in my wheelchair so that I could see over the edge of the pool and watch the other kids splash around.

The camp counselors were everyday high school kids who had no particular experience dealing with disabled children. The young lady who was pushing my wheelchair took me down the ramp forwards. She slipped on the wet ramp and I went rolling forward until my front wheels hit the grass. The chair tilted forward and I fell out and landed on my face. Fortunately, nothing was broken but I had sprained ankles, knees, elbows, and shoulders.

It took me more than a week to recover. During that time I became an even bigger mama’s boy than usual and I insisted on sleeping in her bed relegating my dad to the sofa. When I finally recovered, they tried to encourage me to go back to a second session of the camp but I flatly refused.

Several of my disabled classmates attended an overnight weeklong summer camp called Camp Riley. Although they reassured me that it was staffed by experienced, knowledgeable people and was much better run than what I have experienced at Crossroads, I never had any interest in leaving the safety of my parents’ care. I never spent anywhere overnight away from my parents or grandparents until a hospital stay in my early 20s and then a vacation with my friend Barbara when I was 31. You will hear all about those situations in future episodes.

I always felt completely safe riding the school bus to Roberts and completely safe while at school. There was however a serious safety issue at the school that no one realized until one fateful day when someone dared my classmate Charles Lynn to pull the fire alarm as a prank. That stunt uncovered a serious hazard. Here is the back story.

I mentioned in the last episode that in kindergarten we spent most of the afternoon in nap time laying on cots in the classroom. I also mentioned that the entire school had one hour of post-lunch nap time. Rather than set up the cots in the classroom, the grade school kids would go to the basement for nap time. After each of the three lunch periods, we would all ride the elevator down to the basement, and travel down a very long hallway to a large room where cots and beds were set up. You could pack four wheelchairs and perhaps two or three walkers on the elevator at once. It would take several trips to get the entire contingent down to the basement.

The route from the elevator to the nap room took us past the boiler room which was where the bus drivers would hang out when they were not driving. It was the only designated smoking area in the building. When my mother or other parents were there working on volunteer activities such as the cookie sale, they would hang out with the bus drivers in that room and smoke and drink coffee.

Along that long corridor were huge 55-gallon drums of drinking water which were marked with the civil defense logo. This was the height of the Cold War and our building was a designated fallout shelter. I seriously doubt how much protection the building would have given us. The nap room had a series of short windows high up in the back wall. Then again, we weren’t exactly capable of doing the classic 50s “duck and cover” useless maneuver in the event of a nuclear attack.

In addition to fire drills, in which the entire student population would evacuate the building and lineup on the sidewalk far from the building, we also had so-called “security drills” in which we would all ride down the elevator to the basement nap room which had the beds and cots conveniently folded up and put away. I would’ve liked to have seen them frantically doing this in the event of an actual emergency.

What was supposed to be the safest room in the building was actually a death trap. This was uncovered thanks to my classmate Charles Lynn, a walker with cerebral palsy. One day as we were returning from our nap, someone noticed there was a fire alarm button next to the elevator. None of the kids in wheelchairs could reach a high enough but because Charlie could walk, he could reach it. Someone double-dog dared him to pull the fire alarm in the basement as we were waiting on the elevator.

While we knew it would create a stir, we had no idea it would create a mild panic among the teachers. Naturally, in a fire, the elevator is off-limits. No one ever asked, “How are we going to get 20-30 handicapped kids out of the basement in the event of a fire?” Furthermore, if there ever was a fire, one of the most likely places would be an explosion in the boiler room. As I mentioned, we passed that room en route from the elevator to the nap room. Even if the elevator was operational during a fire, the way would be blocked by a fire in the boiler room.

By the way, there was a long winding ramp connecting the first and second floors and there were smaller ramps connecting various levels of the first floor but there was no ramp access to the basement. You will hear more about the big ramp between floors in a future episode.

After some frantic staff meetings at the end of the day, nap time was moved to the auditorium which was on the ground floor. Although we never had a fire while I was there and I don’t think there was ever one in 50 years the building was used as a school, that stunt by Charles Lynn could have potentially saved a lot of lives by calling to attention a very dangerous situation.

By the way, if you are a race fan who visited the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, you might have seen Charles. He frequently stations himself behind the grandstands of the main stretch near the entrance to the Gasoline Alley garage area where he sells newspapers. He also sells inside Gasoline Alley and is a popular figure with the drivers and mechanics. Legendary driver A.J. Foyt nicknamed him “Wolfman” because somehow they found out he could do a really cool Wolfman howl. Of course, by now he would be in his late 60s like me and I don’t know if he is still around or not.

After the fire alarm incident, we then had our security drills the way most schools held them which was to grab our coats, go out into the hallway facing the wall, and put a coat over our head. As the Cold War began to relax, security drills were renamed tornado drills. Realistically, tornadoes were a much more probable threat, and getting into the hallway away from windows was a more practical defense against tornadoes than it would have been against a nuclear conflagration.

Sadly, these days students not only face fire drills and tornado drills, but they also have to endure active shooter drills. God only knows how Roberts School would have handled those. Probably just lock the door and pray as most kids do. Let’s face it, hiding under your desk is probably no more effective against an active shooter than it would be against a nuclear bomb.

Before disabled children were integrated into regular education settings, one of the arguments against having us in a regular school was that it presented a safety hazard. They feared it would be difficult to evacuate disabled kids and/or evacuating them would slow down the evacuation of able children.

Famed disability advocate Judy Heumann who recently passed away at age 75 was a teacher who taught from a wheelchair because she had contracted polio as a child. She was denied employment because they said she could not help evacuate children in case of an emergency and/or would hinder their evacuation. She eventually won a court case that allowed her to teach. She later worked as an advocate who was instrumental in getting the Americans with Disabilities Act passed. See the articles linked in the description for more about her.

My third grade teacher, Miss Clara Rose Holmes had no such difficulty being employed. She walked with a limp and have limited use of one arm as a result of polio. As a child, she attended Roberts School and upon graduating college, she came back to teach. She was much beloved and fondly remembered by everyone who attended the school.

I was sort of the teacher’s pet in her classroom. She noted how bright I was and was happy to accelerate me through many lessons. I was doing multiplication and division while some kids were still struggling with subtraction.

She concluded that some of the work in her classroom was somewhat “busy work”. While most kids had to go through pages and pages of math problems every day, once she realized I was gifted, she exempt me from some of those math drills. For grammar lessons, most students had to begin the day by writing out all of their spelling words before doing any of the other assignments. I was similarly exempt from these drills.

She had concluded that such grunt work would tire me out. My disability left me no more fatigued than any of the other kids in the class. But when the teacher says, “You’re so smart that I’m not going to waste your time on all these mindless drills.” I certainly wasn’t trying to dissuade her from the idea that it was too hard for me physically.

The end result is that I can solve a logic problem with no difficulty. High school algebra, geometry, trigonometry as well as calculus posed no problems for me yet simple arithmetic is a challenge. In high school, when I took bookkeeping, I could take a column of numbers and add them up three times and get three different answers.

Grammar, sentence structure, and writing all come naturally to me yet I can’t spell worth a damn. One of my junior high teachers tried to trick me into becoming a better speller because he knew I was competitive and egotistical about my intellect. He tried to persuade me to enter a spelling bee. I laughed in his face. “You really expect me who can’t spell my way out of a paper bag to go up against people who have a natural talent for such things? You’re trying to trick me by making it a competition. No way.” Fortunately, I got into computers. Spreadsheets and spellcheckers compensate for my lack of skills.

Two other memorable events occurred when I was in third grade. As part of routine screening, they discovered I couldn’t see. I had no idea I was nearsighted. I just thought that was as well as human beings could see. I was amazed by photography, especially Polaroid instant photography. I could look at a photograph up close with my nearsighted vision and see more detail than I could see of the real objects. I thought it was magical that a photograph could see in more detail than I could.

I got glasses when I was eight years old and discovered a world I didn’t know existed. I didn’t know that grass consisted of individual blades. I never got out of my wheelchair and played on the ground where I could see the grass up close. To me, it just looked like a spread of fuzzy green carpet.

The fact that I was a gifted student, learned to play chess at age 8, and wore glasses completed my image as the ultimate nerd probably before the word nerd was ever coined.

The other memorable event from my third year of school was November 22, 1963. That fateful day my mom was at school in my classroom that day hosting a party as the PTA room mother. It was a thank-you party for our successful annual cookie sale. A teacher from a different classroom ran into our room and told the adults, “Turn on the radio. There is terrible news about the president.”

They all listened intently but I couldn’t tell what was going on. My mom explained to me that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I misunderstood what she meant by “shot”. I thought he had received an inoculation. I asked, “Why did he go to Dallas? Don’t they have doctors in Washington DC that could give him his shots?” She explained he was shot with a gun.

Before the afternoon was over, we learned he had died. Rather than ride the school bus home, Mom took me home herself and tried not to cry in front of me. My family was lifelong Democrats and Roman Catholics. My grandmother had a photograph of Kennedy on the fireplace mantle next to a photograph of the Pope.

My only comment on the way home was, “I guess we throw away that comedy album ‘The First Family’ when we get home. It won’t be cool anymore to make fun of a dead president.” I was referring to a comedy album we owned called “The First Family” by comedian Vaughn Meader. He did wonderful impersonations of Kennedy and the Kennedy. I don’t think we threw it away but we never listened to it again. I brought a copy on CD from Amazon decades later I listened to it one more time just for old times’ sake.

We spent the next few days after the assassination glued to the TV. The following Sunday just as we came in the door from church, I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald live on NBC TV. I said, “Hey Mom… They just shot that guy.”

“What guy?”

“That guy that shot the president. Somebody just shot him.”

If the president of the United States and the man in police custody who had shot him were not safe, were any of us ever safe? That question persisted throughout all of my memories of the 1960s.

I remember prior to that watching the Today Show with my mom during the Cuban missile crisis and asking, “Mommy, What’s a blockade?” I didn’t know how serious the threat was.

Throughout the 60s, we had the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

I was in Chicago two weeks before the riots at the DNC having an ordinary vacation with my parents. What if I had been there during the riots? What might I have seen at a young age?

Things haven’t changed much these days. People still live in fear. The threats are different but the fear is the same.

Even as an old white guy, the fear is still the same. Sometimes I find myself waking up in the morning thinking, “I really should turn on the news. Turn on the Today Show or MSNBC. Maybe Vladimir Putin dropped a tactical nuke on Ukraine. I wouldn’t even know about it if I didn’t turn on the TV and find out.”

Those are the things that occupy us today. Not a whole lot has changed.

In our next episode, we move on to fourth and fifth grade where I got my first motorized wheelchair, and about the diversity of the kids who attended Roberts school.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. It’s not that I’m desperate for money, but a little extra income sure could help.

Many thanks to my Patreon supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express.

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

For this special episode of Contemplating Life, we present a video of a live presentation I made on April 20, 2023, at the PATINS Tech Expo. There is an audio-only linked below. Eventually, I will have a transcript as well. I just wanted to get this episode up quickly.

Note: Portions of this episode deal with adult topics. Viewer discretion is advised.

This week we begin a multipart series recounting my school days in a special education school here in Indianapolis.

Hello, this is Chris Young and welcome to Episode 15 of Contemplating Life.

This week we begin a multi-part series recounting my school days in a special education school here in Indianapolis.

In the mid-1930s, Indianapolis Public Schools built James E. Roberts School #97. It was specially designed for handicapped children and was in many ways in response to the polio epidemic. It was at the corner of East 10th and Oriental Streets on the near east side near Arsenal Technical High School.

The two-story Art Deco building featured ramps, an elevator, and a physical therapy department with a small swimming pool. Students from kindergarten through high school were educated there for 50 years.

The school closed at the end of the 1985-1986 school year. It was used for a variety of purposes for a few years and was considered a candidate for demolition however given its history, there were efforts to preserve the building. It was renovated into an apartment building and is now known as the Roberts School Flats.

In episode 5, I told the story of how my mother tried to enroll me in St. Christopher Parish School. They really weren’t equipped to deal with a disabled child so I was enrolled in Roberts School in kindergarten in 1960 at the age of five.

In the summer of 1960, my parents purchased my first wheelchair. Prior to that, they would just carry me around. Most of the day I would sit in a small chair at our coffee table in the living room where I would play with toys, eat lunch, and watch TV. At dinnertime, I would sit in a high chair at the dining room table.

IPS Schools operated 10 school buses at the time and all of them were used to transport children from all over Indianapolis to Roberts School. In those days, there was no bussing of children to any other school for any reason such as to achieve racial integration. Kids walked or were transported by their parents to their neighborhood schools. There were probably seven or eight high schools and I don’t know how many junior high or middle schools. The Roberts buses were stationed at the school and were occasionally used for field trips by other schools.

The Eagledale neighborhood where I lived was in the far northwest corner of the city and initially, there was no bus route to reach me. They hired an eight-passenger taxicab to pick up several of us in my neighborhood. The cab driver, or perhaps my mother I don’t recall which, would lift me out of my wheelchair and into the taxi. When we arrived at the school, the driver would pick me up and transfer me to a wheelchair that belonged to the school.

There was a girl several years older than me named Erica who lived near here but was just outside the IPS boundaries. I believe she had cerebral palsy although she could walk with difficulty. She persuaded the school to allow her to attend but they would not cross the city limits to pick her up. A family member would drive her to my house and they would sit in the car and wait until the taxi arrived and then she would join us.

I don’t know how long I rode the taxi but it was not for the entire year of kindergarten. At some point, they got a new bus or they rerouted an existing bus to handle the west side. It was an ordinary school bus with the only accommodation being safety belts. The bus driver would lift us out of our home wheelchair and into the school wheelchair upon arrival. And reversed the process at the end of the day.

Among the people who rode that bus with me for many, many years were Chris Fryman who was my age, and Carol Brumett who was about four years older than me. Chris had osteogenesis imperfecta more commonly known as “brittle bone disease”. He used a wheelchair and he had his legs in braces mostly to protect them from breaking. Carol had contracted polio, spent some time in an iron lung, and had minimal use of her arms and legs. They both rode with me for the entire 13 years I attended. (Well Carol graduated before I did.) My good friend Mark Herron who had a form of muscular dystrophy and was a few years younger than me lived right around the corner. He also rode the bus with me for many years. I’ll talk more about him in later episodes.

One of the interesting things about the population of Roberts School was how it reflected the impact of the Salk vaccine for polio. That vaccine became available the summer I was born in 1955. If you looked at my classmates, more than half of the people older than me were there because of polio. No one my age or younger had polio. It’s like someone just flipped a switch and the disease disappeared.

Not all of the kids at Roberts School were in wheelchairs. Some, such as those with mild cerebral palsy could walk perhaps with crutches. Others had severe asthma like my friend Ted Hayes, or a heart condition such as Lily Ottinger, and a few had epilepsy. Many of them probably didn’t need to be segregated into a special education school. Any medical condition that a child had that the average school nurse didn’t want to deal with would get them sent off to our special school. Anyone not in a wheelchair was referred to as a “walker”.

I mentioned that I used a wheelchair that was provided by the school. That doesn’t mean that IPS purchased the wheelchairs. There was little or no extra funding for special education. The wheelchairs had either been donated or had been purchased by the PTA. Every year, we held a cookie sale and the proceeds went to purchase wheelchairs and other equipment. It seemed as though the attitude at IPS was, “Hey… We built you a special school. What more do you want?”

My first wheelchair at Roberts was nothing more than a child-size wooden chair nailed to a plank with four small caster wheels and a handle mounted on the back. I had to be pushed everywhere. It didn’t have large wheels that I could push with my hands. My standard child’s wheelchair that my parents had purchased did have large rear wheels and if I was on a completely smooth flat surface I could push myself a few inches with a great deal of difficulty.

The kindergarten was a large room complete with its own dedicated restroom, a piano for music class, a TV set (something none of the other classrooms in the building had), and lots of wooden blocks and other toys.

The teacher was a wonderful woman named Miss Helen Martin. I’m pretty sure she was still teaching kindergarten when I graduated.

After lunch, she and one of the custodians would set up a bunch of cots and we would spend most of the afternoon in “naptime”. Considering that many kindergarten classes are only half a day, spending the other half of the day trying to nap was not unreasonable. The problem was, everyone in the school had at least one hour of naptime after lunch. I don’t think it went all the way up to the high school level but it did go through junior high which meant 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. We will talk more about nap time in a later episode.

When you get to school, it’s typical for your family, especially grandmas, aunts, and great-aunts to ask, “Have you got a girlfriend yet.” Apparently, they’ve never heard of puberty and don’t realize that those kinds of concerns are not a priority for several years. Yet I still received frequent pressure to answer the question. It seems that my classmate Cheryl was receiving similar pressure from her family to find a boyfriend so, although we were both clueless as to what that kind of relationship involved, we agreed to be boyfriend and girlfriend.

Cheryl was born with no arms. She had tiny appendages perhaps 3 inches long each of which had two tiny fingers. Throughout our grade school years, we would frequently get visitors in the building. They were typically nursing students or special education teaching students. Upon seeing Cheryl, you would hear the word “thalidomide” whispered. The infamous drug thalidomide was prescribed to women in the early and mid-1950s as a very effective method of combating morning sickness during pregnancy. The problem was, it caused severe birth defects in many cases–most often missing limbs. They naturally assumed that was the cause of her condition.

Decades later, I saw a documentary about the drug and did some research of my own. As best I can tell, it was never used in the United States and it was completely discontinued in 1954. I was born in 1955 as was presumably Cheryl. Unless her mother was Canadian or European and was unfortunate enough to have taken the drug shortly before it was pulled from the market, her condition was NOT caused by thalidomide.

Anyway, one day we were sitting at a table coloring. I was about to complete my masterpiece of an airplane flying over houses complete with fluffy clouds and a smiling sun in the sky. Cheryl was sitting on top of the same table that I was using drawing with a crayon between her toes. For reasons I never understood, probably my fault somehow, she reached over and scribbled all over my drawing. I was furious. When I tried to retaliate, she pulled her paper away from me to where I couldn’t reach it. Now I was even more furious because she was exploiting my disability (or rather my inability) to climb up on the table and scribble on her paper. I took that extremely personally. A nasty argument ensued. I don’t know for certain who “went there” first but I will give her the benefit of the doubt and say that I took the argument to the extreme that I’m about to describe.

“I don’t want to be your boyfriend anymore!”

“Good! I don’t want to be your girlfriend anymore!”

“I don’t think anybody will ever want to be your boyfriend because you can’t hug them or hold hands with them because you got no arms.”

“So… you’re never going to get married because you’re in a wheelchair and you can’t walk down the aisle!”

At that point, Miss Martin rushed over to intervene and broke up the fight.

Looking back at the incident, I find it fascinating that it illustrated a five-year-old’s concept of a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. For the boy, it consisted of hugging and holding hands, and the girl was already anticipating marriage.

Although James E. Roberts School was built with a physical therapy department, ramps, and elevators to accommodate our special needs, the reason that most of us were there was to protect us from the cruelty we would encounter from other students because of our disabilities. This incident, and many others I could recount, illustrates that we were more normal than they thought. We could be just as cruel to one another regarding our disabilities as if we were integrated into a regular education setting with able children.

Cheryl left Roberts School for a couple of years but I never knew why. When she returned, she was a year behind me. She attempted to use artificial arms but they never were worth the effort for her. By the time she reached junior high, like most walkers, she moved on to a regular school.

When I was in my early 20s, I saw a newspaper feature article about her. The accompanying photo showed her sitting at a desk at her office job typing on a typewriter with her feet. It was your typical feel-good piece about a disabled person making it in the world. She was well-employed and engaged to be married. Some 62 years after our argument, she was right and I wasn’t. She got married and I didn’t.

I’ve got one more story about Cheryl that reflects almost as poorly on me as the one I just told but it’s too funny not to tell.

Fast-forward about 14 years and I’m in my first-semester college physics class at IUPUI. My instructor is a wonderful educator Professor Emeritus Golden Flake. Yes, somewhere along the way Mr. and Mrs. Flake actually decided to name their little boy “Golden”. His motto was, “Physics is Fun” with “fun” spelled PHUN.

One day he was lecturing about the conservation of rotational momentum. He explained, “Did you ever wonder why you swing your arms when you walk or run?” Having done neither yet observed the same I was still curious. He continued, “It’s because when you put one foot in front of the other, and your other foot goes backward, your hips and entire lower body twist. In order to keep from waddling, you have to swing your arms in the opposite direction to absorb that rotational energy.”

I turned to my friend Mike Gregory and said, “Eureka! That explains Cheryl.“ To which he replied, “What? Who?” Later when I had time, I told him about Cheryl and her disability. I explained that when she became a teenager, what God had denied her in the way of limbs, he more than extra made up for in her ample bosom. The poor girl – although she kept her bra straps extremely tight, when she walked her boobs bounced all over the place.

I told Mike, “Now I understand why. All of that rotational momentum had to go somewhere and she couldn’t swing her arms so it went into her…” Mike interrupted to finish my sentence, “coupled harmonic oscillators.”

Mike went on to tell me about a book of humorous essays he found in the library titled, “Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown”. It was a spoof of scientific journal papers in which they applied rigorous engineering and scientific disciplines to ordinary events. The title of the book was the same as the lead essay. It explained in extreme engineering detail complete with force vector diagrams of what it takes to avoid a wardrobe malfunction in a strapless evening gown. Mike suggested if they ever did a volume 2 that I should submit a paper about my kindergarten girlfriend.

Admittedly the whole story is very misogynistic but hey… We were 19-year-old college students. What do you expect?

I found the book on Amazon while preparing this podcast. I couldn’t resist the nostalgia and I ordered a used paperback copy for $10.

In our next episode, we will continue the saga of my school days at Roberts School. Somewhere along the way, we will have my reading of an award-winning article I wrote about my experiences there.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. It’s not that I’m desperate for money, but a little extra income sure could help.

Many thanks to my Patreon supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this week’s episode, we discuss how the general public can take disability language and abuse it in negative ways.

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Hello, this is Chris Young, and welcome to another episode of “Contemplating Life”.

This week we will conclude our two-part series on the terminology used to describe disability. Last week we talked about how words are dependent upon consensus and context. Over the years most consensus and context about the use of various words related to disability has evolved. In some cases, the consensus has not caught up to the new context.

We focused mostly on the evolution of the words “handicapped” and “disabled”. While I understand many of the reasons for the change, I still think that the word “handicapped” should not be considered offensive and has a useful definition distinct from “disability”.

A brief aside, I’m making a serious attempt to keep these podcasts under 30 minutes. When I have a lot to say on a topic, it’s becoming difficult to find a good place to split the episode into two pieces. We have one more aspect of the word “disability” to discuss before moving on to this week’s primary topic – the way the general public has misused and abused disability terminology in offensive ways.

Having evolved from handicapped to disabled, another debate arose in the community. Should we use the phrase “disabled person” or “person with a disability”? Fortunately, the debate never got very furious. At one point many disabled people concluded the terms were interchangeable because there was no clear consensus. The “person with a disability” phrase is called “person first” terminology. Its advocates claimed that we should “put people first” and that disability was secondary. Okay… Maybe…

Ben Mattlin said in a recent interview that “disabled person” seems to be winning. The argument was that “person first” by its nature puts the disability last as if we are trying to hide it. If we are to have disability pride, then put that word up front and wear it proudly. He also points out the obvious awkwardness of the phrase “person with a disability” in contrast to the simplicity of the phrase “disabled person.”.

My argument is summed up in the words “We are speaking English”. In English, we put the adjective before the noun. The noun is “person”. It is the subject of the sentence or phrase. The word “disabled” is the adjective describing the subject. “Disabled person” is simply proper English.

Now let’s move on to our main topic – offensive words used to describe disability.

Before there were handicapped, the common word in use was “crippled”. Outside its use to describe a disabled person, crippled evokes the connotation of damaged into immobility or uselessness such as, “The damage in the engine room crippled the ship and left it adrift.” People with disabilities were seen as damaged goods who were incapable of functioning. Certain hospitals were described as Crippled Children’s Hospitals. Polio was described as a crippling disease because it would literally cause body parts to become deformed and useless. By its nature, the term is only applied to physical or orthopedic handicaps.

Today the word is simply disused as archaic and for good reason. It evokes such a negative pity-driven image. Note, however, the shortened form “crip” is often used within the disability community humorously as a way to reclaim a negative word and turn it positive. A case in point is the award-winning 2020 Netflix documentary Crip Camp about a summer camp for disabled teenagers. I have similarly heard the word “gimp” as a word disabled people might use to ironically or jokingly refer to themselves. These words fall into the category, “we can use them about ourselves but you can’t.” This is somewhat in the same vein as the way African-Americans use a form of the n-word ending with the letter “a”.

There are a number of cringe-worthy words and phrases that have been roundly rejected by the disability community. Awkward phrases such as “differently-abled”, or “handi-capable” are ridiculous ways to avoid the word “disability”. Also on the do not fly list is “handicapper” unless you are talking about someone who handicaps a horse race. These kinds of words are considered condescending, and ableist, and have been soundly rejected by the disabled community.

Many parents of disabled children describe their kids as “special needs” children or themselves as parents of a special needs child. The term “special needs” seems to be falling out of favor and I have to admit I’m not exactly sure what the issue is. My experience is that parents who use this terminology typically are in an ongoing struggle against the school system or other agencies to have the needs of their children met.

I’ve heard it argued that disabled children have the same needs as any other child. They need to get to and from school. They need an education. They need to eat lunch. They need to go to the bathroom. While the solutions to these needs are nonstandard, there is nothing inherently special about the needs themselves.

I’m reminded of the funny scene from the 1985 film Mask starring Cher as the mother of a teenager, played by Eric Stoltz, who had a disfiguring medical condition. She was arguing with a junior high school principal trying to get her son enrolled.

The principal says, “This is a public junior high school, Miss Dennis. There are special schools with wonderful facilities that might be more appropriate for his needs.”
Cher replies, “Do you teach algebra and biology and English here?”

“Of course.”

“Those are his needs.”

I can buy that argument to a certain extent. But in fairness, the boy in the story, unlike most children described as special needs children, didn’t require any extra services, adaptations, or accommodations.

Should we describe these kids as “children in need of special solutions to their ordinary needs?” Wow! And you thought “person with a disability” was awkward compared to “disabled person.”
I have no objection to the words “special needs” and I don’t believe that the people who use that phrase, again mostly parents, are in any way shape, or form perpetuating any kind of negative stereotype about their children. As I said earlier, they are mostly preoccupied with getting the services and accommodations that their children need.

Probably the best example of the way in which disability terminology has evolved over the years as both context and consensus has changed is the way in which we describe intellectual disabilities. If there ever was a moving target of political correctness, this is the worst and sadly we may be stuck in a never-ending cycle of evolving terminology.

You are probably unaware that the words “idiot”, “imbecile”, and “moron” were originally the medically correct terminology for people with various degrees of intellectual disability. Unfortunately, the words were co-opted by the general public as insults towards people who were behaving irrationally or in other ways were being just plain stupid not as a result of any disability.

In an attempt to come up with new terminology, the phrase “mental retardation” was coined. Outside of disability circles, the meaning of the verb “to retard” is to slow down or impair the progress of something. One often heard people with intellectual disabilities described as, “There is nothing wrong with them… They are just slow.” Depending on the tone or the context, that’s not altogether a bad characterization. People with intellectual disabilities can be highly functioning self-sufficient people. Mental tasks simply do not come as easily as they do to the average person. People who were described as “slow” in fact probably had some sort of learning disability.

The bottom line is that the words “mentally retarded” were a well-reasoned attempt to create terminology that was accurate, useful, and not offensive. In special education programs, there were three levels: “mildly mentally retarded”, “moderately mentally retarded”, and “‘severely/profoundly mentally retarded”. These categories were typically defined by a range of IQ levels and corresponded directly to the previous words “idiot”, “imbecile”, and “moron” although I’m not certain in what order.

Unfortunately, the insensitive general public once again turned the terminology into a derogatory insult. The word “retarded” and its shortened form “retard” became so derogatory and offensive that now they are often referred to as the “r-word”.

Initially, children with intellectual disabilities were institutionalized and warehoused with no opportunity for personal growth or fulfillment. Eventually, parents rejected medical recommendations of institutionalization and kept their children at home surrounded by a loving and supportive family. They began seeking specialized programs and support systems for the children. Organizations known as ARCs began appearing in the 1950s. The acronym initially stood for “Association for Retarded Children”. As their clients aged and continued to need a variety of services, they changed their name to “Association for Retarded Citizens”.

Like the NAACP, these organizations were now faced with a historical acronym based on archaic and offensive terminology. Local ARCs as well as the national organization still retain the name ARC but it is no longer an acronym. Their web pages explain the history of the term. They explain that they kept the ARC designation as a nostalgic respect to their history.

While researching this history I looked up the local Marion County ARC which served Indianapolis as I was growing up. The first page that came up was Marion County ARC in Osceola Florida. They cleverly say that the letters now stand for “Advocacy Resource Center”. They are affiliated with the National ARC yet the national organization hasn’t picked up on this clever renaming nor has the local Indianapolis ARC organization now known as “Noble ARC” named after the “Noble Center” sheltered workshop.

Today, many people use the designation “developmental disability”. But as I explained earlier, depending on what definition you use for DD, I qualify as developmentally disabled yet I am a college graduate who came just two IQ points short of qualifying for Mensa membership. It is inappropriate to assume that a developmental disability is an intellectual disability yet many fail to make that distinction.

There is a part of me that wishes that the ARCs and other disability advocates had drawn a line in the sand and stood up for the word retarded and insisted that the word in and of itself should not be considered offensive. I wish they had spoken out more emphatically against the misuse of the word rather than allowing the word itself to be canceled. The problem is, there is a serious risk that people will co-opt new terms the same way they have in the past. The insensitive public is very clever and they can turn any terminology into an insult.

Here is a fascinating example. Many years ago I was sitting in the parish office at St. Gabriel Catholic Church working on budgets with my friend Judy who was the parish secretary/bookkeeper. In those days, the parish also operated an elementary school. I overheard a conversation in the hallway as a teacher was yelling at a boy. Apparently, he had been tasked with the job of carrying classroom trash out to the dumpster in the parking lot. It was about 25° outside that day. He was confronted by a teacher as he reentered the building.

“Johnny”, the teacher screamed, “Why aren’t you wearing a coat? We don’t run a special education school here!”

It was one of those rare moments in my life where it was probably fortuitous that I have a disability. I probably would have gone out to the hall and punched the teacher square in the face. Well, perhaps not. I was so stunned by what she said I couldn’t move. To this day I regret not rolling out into the hallway and giving her a piece of my mind.

Essentially, she could not have been more insulting if she had simply called the boy a freaking retard. In fact, her euphemism was even more offensive because it not only disparaged people with intellectual disabilities, it disparaged anyone who was educated in a special education environment including myself. Furthermore, my experience with people with intellectual disabilities such as Down syndrome suggests they would be far less likely to go outside without a coat, once you had told them the rules, than would your average belligerent 10-year-old boy. I was especially disappointed not only that she had said such a thing but that she said it to an impressionable child. He was going to grow up thinking that special education was a euphemism for stupidity.

Here’s another brief example of how you can turn any disability language into an insult. I once heard a standup comedian talking about a guy she knew who wasn’t exactly the brightest person around. In questioning his intellect, she said she asked him “When you went to school, did you take a long ride on a short bus?” I nearly fell out of my wheelchair laughing. Although it was highly offensive, I thought it was phenomenally clever. Then again, I’m such a student of comedy that I can laugh at offensive things routinely. Sorry, it’s a character flaw.

Prior to hearing that joke, I had never heard the phrase “ride the short bus” used as an insult yet a Google search revealed a slang dictionary entry indicating that it was a widely used slang insult to one’s intelligence.

In case you don’t get the reference, undersized school buses are frequently used to transport disabled children to special education programs sometimes long distances between school districts. Each individual school district often can’t support a variety of special education programs so they enter into cooperatives in which special education programs are consolidated and shared between districts. Thus the stereotype of a long ride on a short bus.

Although the school bus I rode every day to a special education school was a full-size bus, it exclusively carried wheelchair passengers. There were only about seven or eight of us on the bus. Had we not been in wheelchairs, a short bus would have been sufficient to take us on a very long ride all over the west side of Indianapolis to collect us and transport us to the special education school on the near east side of the city.

Although I didn’t ride a short bus, I identify as a short bus rider.

The bottom line is that no matter what terminology we use to describe any kind of disability, there is an ongoing risk that the words will be misinterpreted, misused, and abused. This struggle to accurately and sensitively identify ourselves as disabled people is likely to continue for a long time. The problem isn’t with the words themselves. Words are just an abstraction. They are a way to allow us to communicate about disability and contemplate what it means to be disabled.

While I agree that words are powerful and should be used properly, it seems to me these days people have become too sensitive about words. I recall the days when we taught our children the adage, “Sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me.” I’d like to see that lesson resurrected.

The meaning of words depends on consensus and context. If we don’t work hard to ensure consensus and understand context, no matter what words we use, our ability to communicate concepts related to disability and to think about disability will be severely… uh… will be severely… Oh hell… Just say it Chris…it’s the right word in this context… Okay, let’s start that sentence over again.

If we don’t work hard to ensure consensus and understand context, no matter what words we use, our ability to communicate concepts related to disability and to think about disability will be severely handicapped.

Sorry, not sorry… I just couldn’t resist.

Anyway, that’s just my opinion… I could be wrong.

As always, I welcome your comments.

In the opening episode of this podcast, I said I would be talking about a variety of topics that included disability, religion, politics, and entertainment. I have lots more to say about disability and my life living with a disability but I think it’s time we move on to a different area. Next week I will discuss my off-again, on-again relationship with God and my journey of faith.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. It’s not that I’m desperate for money, but a little extra income sure could help.

Abundant thanks to my current Patreon supporters. Your affirmation means more to me than words can describe.

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

In this week’s episode, we talk about the evolution of disability terminology, especially the transition from the word handicapped to disabled.

Please consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/contemplatinglife

If you cannot support us financially, please, please post links on social media so we can grow our audience.

Where to listen to this podcast.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Thank you for joining me for the fourth episode of “Contemplating Life”

Today we’re going to continue talking about disability issues. In our recent episodes, we discussed what it means to be inspiring and to talk about ableism. Today we begin a two-part series on the language used to describe disability.

I previously mentioned that I was tending to present the standard party-line views on a topic and then explaining how I disagreed with parts of that position. Today we are going to turn things around. Having lived with a disability for 67 years, I haven’t kept up with modern terminology and definitions. So, I’m going to begin by explaining the terminology I’ve used for more than half my life. I’ll explain my reluctance to abandon those old definitions. Then I’ll talk about how I’ve recently come to appreciate newer ways of approaching the definition of disability.

Using the proper language to talk about disability is not just a case of being politically correct. The language that we use to describe disability is a reflection of our attitude about disability and it affects the attitudes of others.

Words have power. Words have meaning. If we are going to wield that power responsibly and sensitively we need to understand the real meaning of the words we use.

Pardon me while I go off on a philosophical tangent and talk about words in general…

What is a word?

It’s an abstraction. It’s a way that allows us to talk about things that are not necessarily present or are themselves abstractions with no physical form.

I just said words are about communication but it goes much deeper than that. We think using words. When we think about something, we use words in an internal monologue. Sometimes, we have feelings or experiences that are beyond words. This not only illustrates the inadequacy of language to communicate these things, but it also limits our ability to reflect upon them, think about them, or analyze their meaning in our lives. We can remember such feelings and experiences and perhaps through such recollection relive them. But when it comes to thinking, we are limited by the inadequacy of words.

People who speak foreign languages find themselves thinking in those languages as well. The only foreign language I ever studied was French and I got terrible grades in it so I’m no expert. As poorly as I performed in French, on rare occasions I find myself recalling a French idiom or phrase that doesn’t have a good English equivalent and I have been able to “think in French”. I can only imagine what it’s like for someone who has a good mastery of more than one language. The ability to contemplate things differently and have a richer experience of understanding must be phenomenal.

Words require consensus. Words have context. When either consensus or context is absent, words become meaningless.

When I say that words are an abstraction subject to consensus and context let me give some examples. If I say to you the word “elephant”, I have imparted to you an image of a large gray animal with treetrunk legs, big floppy ears, and a long prehensile nose. Simply speaking the word “elephant”, doesn’t cause one to appear in front of you. There is nothing special about the sound of the word nor the sequence of letters of its written form that necessarily ties it to that particular creature. It is only by consensus that that sound and that sequence of letters have been assigned as the label for that particular creature.

This idea of consensus is illustrated by the fact that different geographical areas with different cultural traditions have different languages that assign different words to the same object. While the word elephant translated into other languages might sound roughly the same, the English word for a small hopping amphibian is “frog”, in German it’s “frosch”, in Spanish it’s “rana”, in French it’s “la grenouille”, and so on for countless other languages. . Different populations and cultures… different consensus… different words.

Context is also important. The word “frog” can be a hopping reptile or a derogatory term for French people. The elephant in the room can be physical or metaphorical. Context is important.
Again, without consensus and context – words are meaningless. Or at least they should be. Sometimes we apply our own consensus and context and misinterpret words.

The words we assign to animals or objects are highly unlikely to evolve over time. However, the meaning of other words has evolved throughout history as the consensus evolves and as the context of the times evolves.

The words that we use to describe race, gender, and disability are much more likely to evolve as our attitudes about these topics have evolved. For example, the technical name for dark-skinned Africans is the “negro race”. That evolved into the pejorative “n-word” and the attempt to be less offensive with the phrase “colored person”. That phrase however has so many roots in segregation such as “colored only” or “no colored allowed” that it also has a highly negative context. With a sense of pride, people began describing themselves as Black and/or African-American which today are both considered socially acceptable.

The consensus has evolved but context is important as well. It is only through consensus and context that when we say the phrase African-American that we don’t wonder if the person was Caucasian, born in South Africa, and living in Mexico, or perhaps of Middle Eastern Arab descent living in Canada, or a person born in Israel living in Argentina even though technically the label African-American would apply to each of these three.

Given the negative history of the phrase “colored people,” I’m not quite sure why “people of color” is acceptable and doesn’t carry the same stigma. But that’s probably a topic for a different episode. I’m just an old liberal white guy so what do I know?

The language used to describe gender and the use of a variety of pronouns also reflect our evolving views on gender.

The language we use to describe disability has evolved and that’s what we really want to discuss today. This discussion flows right out of last week’s topic of ableism.

Not only have the words that we use to describe disability evolved during my lifetime, but my own views about those words have also evolved significantly in recent months. Let’s explore some definitions of words and the way I learned them growing up.

Typically, I begin with either a disease or a medical condition. While there are technical differences between the two, it generally starts with one or the other of those.

I have a disease. It is a genetic neuromuscular disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 2. There are probably a dozen or more types of neuromuscular diseases. Other examples of diseases that cause disability include polio, cancer, diabetes, hemophilia, AIDS, and diseases related to blindness/vision impairment or deafness/hearing impairment. Diseases can be genetic or acquired.

Somewhat distinct from diseases are other medical conditions caused by accident or injury. For example, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, or cerebral palsy which is usually caused by lack of oxygen at birth. Technically these would not be considered “diseases”.

The distinction between disease and medical condition is not a hard and fast line. I suppose technically you could say that some diseases cause medical conditions. For example, HIV causes AIDS.

My concept of “disability” is that it is a consequence of a disease or a medical condition. A disability is something that you are literally dis-able to do. In my case, it is primarily a mobility disability. I never had the necessary physical strength to walk or stand. As my disease has progressed, I’ve lost what limited use of my arms that I once had. I have only minimal use of a few fingers.

Other disabled people have paralysis and a lack of sensation or perhaps a lack of muscle control as in cerebral palsy. Some cannot see, hear, or speak.

As I was growing up and for most of my life, the most common word used to describe disabled people was “handicapped”. For various reasons, some of which I don’t understand nor do I agree with, the word “handicapped” has fallen out of favor. Let me define “handicapped” the way I felt it was used when I was younger and it was the commonly accepted terminology. Under these definitions, there was a difference between handicap and disability.

The disability was your basic limitation caused by your disease or medical condition as we described earlier. Your handicap was the interaction between that disability and your environment. When your disability prevents you from doing things that you reasonably want to do, or that society and your environment expect you to be able to do, then it becomes a handicap. The general meaning of handicap is it is some sort of disadvantage that you have.

One of the phrases to which disabled people often object is, “we all have disabilities.” That’s sort of the disability version of the statement, “all lives matter.” However, under the technical definition of disability as I defined it, this statement is true. Here are some examples of disabilities that everyone has:

You can’t fly through the air like Superman, nor do you have his strength, x-ray vision, heat vision, or other superpowers. You can’t stretch like Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four nor turn invisible like Susan Storm. You can’t read minds like Professor X of the X-Men. These are disabilities we all share. While it might be fun to possess the superpowers of our comic book heroes, no one reasonably expects to be able to do those things. Nobody else reasonably expects you to be able to do these things. You don’t live in an environment designed primarily for those who have such abilities. Therefore these “disabilities” don’t present us with a “handicap.”

Under these definitions, it is possible to have a disability that does not handicap you.

Let me give an example. We can call it hypothetical but it’s based on a real person I know who went to the same special education grade school that I went to. Our subject has osteogenesis imperfecta which is more commonly known as brittle bone disease. It is the same disability that advocate Stella Young had that we discussed in episode 1. Like most people with OI, his growth was stunted and he is a Little Person. He also uses a power wheelchair. After I knew him in grade school, he went on to earn a law degree and has a successful practice which includes being a consultant for companies regarding ADA and Section 504 compliance. At one time I’d considered becoming a lawyer and this guy has the career I would have liked to have if I had become a lawyer. He is married. Has a son. Drives his own specially equipped van. His law practice is thriving. While I can’t honestly say what his day-to-day life is like or what challenges he has faced, by my definition he is disabled but he has few if any handicaps.

Through technology, accommodations, and support systems, his disability does not significantly limit his capability to do the things that he wants to do, which society expects him to do, or his environment assumes he can do.

One of the phrases that is often objected to by disabled people is the idea that you can “overcome a disability”. I totally agree that short of a medical cure that removes the underlying cause of the disability, you can’t overcome it. In contrast, you can overcome a handicap.

It bothered me when the word handicap was phased out in favor of disability especially when it comes to government programs. It was my belief that programs should help people with handicaps because that’s something you can do something about. As we discussed last week, no amount of accommodation, support systems, technology, or other benefits short of a medical cure is going to eliminate a disability. But it can make a huge difference in mitigating or even eliminating one’s handicap.

My lawyer acquaintance might be eligible for a variety of government programs many of which he may not need. But because he is disabled he is eligible. In previous legal definitions, he would not be eligible because he is not handicapped.

All of the above is based on my definitions of the words handicapped and disabled and I believe they represent the views of most of the disability community as I was growing up and in my young adult years. But as we’ll see, these definitions have evolved over time and it’s taken me some time to comprehend how they have evolved. Some of my concerns about the transition from handicap to disability have been addressed as I’ve gotten deeper into the subject.

A little over a year ago, famous YouTuber Shane Burcaw who has the same type of SMA as I have, created a video called, “Things you should NEVER say to a disabled person.” The word “never” was in all caps. He and his able wife Hannah post videos several times a week talking about their life as an inter-abled couple. I highly recommend their YouTube channel and I’ll provide a link in the description. I really liked about 90% of what they had to say and I was inspired to create a reaction video of my own also linked here.

Shane spoke out against the use of the word handicap and ever since then, I’ve tried to do research on why the word has not only fallen out of favor but is considered objectionable to many disabled people. I listened carefully to what Shane had to say. I also read the book “Disability Pride” by Ben Mattlin which I referenced in previous episodes. And I researched other online sources. I still believe that there is nothing objectionable about the word handicap as I have defined it. I still insist that there is a distinct difference in meaning between disability and handicap. However, my disappointment or objection to it being phased out of use has somewhat diminished.

Here’s what I’ve learned from my research about the word handicap.

The origin of the word handicap comes from a medieval English game called “hand-in-cap” in which players trade items in the presence of an umpire. According to Wikipedia, the game goes as follows. The umpire decides whether the items are of the same value and if not, what is the difference in value. Both players and the umpire then place forfeit money in a cap. Both players then place a hand in the cap and withdraw it. An open hand means that you agree with the evaluation of the umpire and a closed hand means you disagree. If both players agree, then the assessed value difference is paid, the items are traded, and the umpire gets the forfeit money. If both players disagree, no trade occurs, and the umpire gets the forfeit money. If one player agrees and the other disagrees, there is no trade and the player who agreed gets the forfeit money.

The concept of a neutral third party trying to even things up was extended to handicapped horseracing. If a particular horse was thought to have an undue advantage, officials would determine that it had to carry a specific amount of extra weight to make the race more competitive. In the early 20th century, derived from the idea of handicapped races, the term handicap began to be applied to disabled people because they carried a greater burden.

Shane and others make the claim that the word handicap originates from disabled street beggars who would sit on the sidewalk with their cap in hand begging for money. While I can agree that if someone made the connection between someone with their “hat in hand” and a disabled person, the word handicap might somehow bring forth that image. I specifically used the phrase “hat in hand” because that is the more common way to describe beggars. I don’t believe I ever heard that described as “cap in hand” and if it did, how do you reverse the words to get the phrase “hand in cap” and thus handicap?

I was born in 1955. I went to a school that was described as a school for the handicapped. It was the common word in usage all throughout my school years and much of my adult life. I recently came across an old videotape that I had shot at the 1983 Indiana Governor’s Conference on the Handicapped so I know the word was being used not only in government but in the broader community in the mid-1980s and my guess is several years beyond. There is a link to the video in the description here.

In all of that time, among the extremely few people I encountered who were beginning to prefer disability over handicap, I never once heard the excuse that their objections were based on the idea that it portrays us stereotypically as beggars. Until recently, I never heard any discussion either positive or negative regarding the origin of the word. We were aware of the connection to handicap as it relates to sports but I never heard the origin of the word or why it was used in either sports or disability language.

Shane my man, I respect you and love what you do to bust stereotypes and educate people about disability issues. But I think you’re off the mark when you object to handicap based on its alleged origins regarding beggars. Handicap has other meanings not only in horseracing but in golf, chess, bowling, and possibly other sports. One can easily make the connection between the medieval game and the use of the word in these sports. Why would the word handicap have as its origin the idea of a beggar as it is used in sports?

Handicap does imply a burden or a disadvantage. I can understand why disabled people don’t want to perpetuate the view that they are burdened or that they are a burden. Go back to my rant last week and you’ll see I find nothing objectionable about the idea that a handicap or disability can be burdensome. It’s a burden I endure with as much grace as I can muster but it is a burden nevertheless.

In that video from the Governor’s Conference on the Handicapped from 1983, the word handicap was always used in a positive light but there was other language that today we would consider blatantly ablest. In the opening invocation and in the governor’s keynote address, there were tributes to Indiana State Senator Charles E. Bosma who had recently passed away. He was a fierce advocate for disabled people. However, at a couple of points, he was described as being an advocate for “those less fortunate than us” and “the downtrodden and oppressed.”

If the connection between the word handicap and the idea of bearing a burden perpetuates ablest attitudes, then I can understand why it has been phased out in favor of disability. Note, however, that the transition has not been smooth within the disability community. There have been, and may still be, people who see the word disabled as being synonymous with useless or incapable. They would say that handicapped is an acceptable term even if it does imply a disadvantage because realistically that’s accurate. It’s better to be accurately described as being at a disadvantage than for the implication that you are incapacitated (and by extension worthless).

Obviously, I have no negative feelings about either term.

As I mentioned earlier, part of the reason that I mourn the loss of the word handicap is its use in legal definitions, especially entitlement programs. However, my research has shown that the current legal definitions of disability are written in such a way that they are functional definitions. For example, at one time, the definition of developmental disability was a disability with onset before age 22 and included mental retardation, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and other similar conditions. This is the same sort of medically based definition of disability that I grew up with.

The new definition of developmental disability also speaks of onset before age 22 but goes on to say that it is a disability that requires a variety of interdisciplinary services and that results in a substantial functional limitation in at least three of the following major life activities: self-care, understanding and use of language, mobility, self-direction, capacity for independent living, and economic self-sufficiency.

Under the old definition, my medical condition of neuromuscular disease did not qualify as DD yet my friend Christopher Lee who had cerebral palsy did qualify. While our medical diagnoses were different, the types of services we needed were very similar. Under the new definition, I have a substantial functional limitation in four of the seven listed areas. They are self-care, mobility, capacity for independent living, and economic self-sufficiency. Thus I qualify for programs for developmentally disabled people.

In other words, the legal definitions of disability are no longer medically based. They are functionally based. The new definition of disability is extremely close to my traditional definition of handicap. So in many ways, I feel better about the transition between the words than I have felt for many years.

Ben Mattlin reports that people have lost ADA accommodation lawsuits even though they appeared to have a disability. The loss was based on the idea that they already had sufficient technology or accommodations to meet their needs. Under my old definitions, the court might have ruled, “You are disabled but not handicapped.”

In my video response to Shane and in other blog posts and essays, I have argued that if handicap is not the correct word to describe the way in which your disability interacts with your environment then we need a different word. But in some ways, that was because I was stuck on a medical model of disability. So… if disability now refers to environmental and social interaction rather than a medical model, do we need a new word for the medically based concept of disability that I have used for years?

I need more research but I think that the common practice is to talk about a social definition of disability (sometimes also called a functional definition of disability) versus a medical definition. If you’re going to add those adjectives, then I’m satisfied that we are on the same page. But I think there are a lot of people, especially my age, and possibly in the general able population, who hear the word disability and think of the medical model. So if the default definition of disability is a social disability or functional disability then we have a lot of education to do to make sure that people really understand that we are talking about interaction with expectations and environment in the same sense that I defined handicapped and not the old medical model.

The consensus has not caught up to the new context.

I have much more to say about language related to disability but we need to wrap up this episode. In next week’s episode of “Contemplating Life”, we’ll talk about the ways in which the general public co-ops, misuses, and abuses disability language in a highly offensive manner.

As always, I welcome your comments.

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In this week’s episode, I expressed my concerns that some disability advocates go too far when labeling something ableism. They imply that anything negative about disability is ableist.

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Hello, this is Chris Young, and welcome to episode #3 of Contemplating Life.

Obviously, this being only the third episode, I’m brand-new to this podcasting business. My concept for this podcast is a bit open-ended but I’m starting to see a theme emerge. In the first episode, after I introduced myself, I talked about the negative and condescending aspects of being told that you are “inspiring” because of your disability even when you haven’t done anything extraordinary. Then I turned things around and talked about my belief that sometimes that’s okay. Who am I to say what can and cannot be inspiring?

Today we continue the pattern. Last week we talked about the evils of ableism. But in this installment, I’m going to take a bit of an opposing and possibly controversial view that everything that gets labeled ableism isn’t necessarily ableism. So my pattern seems to be that I present the party line and then talk about the areas where I disagree with that stance.

I’m going to go off on a bit of an angry rant this time but I want to state upfront that I’m normally not an angry or bitter person. It’s just that I think people are implying that any negative statement about disability makes you ablest and that just isn’t true.

I think it goes back to that old adage, “When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” We also see this kind of thing in other kinds of -isms. Not everyone who criticizes a black person is a racist. Not everyone who criticizes a woman is sexist. Not everyone who criticizes Israel is anti-Semitic.

In their genuinely appropriate crusade to stamp out the horrors of ableism, I am concerned that some disability advocates go so far as to suggest that there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a disability. I suppose this boils down to nitpicking over the meaning of the word “wrong”. Obviously, I agree that disabled people deserve the same rights and opportunities as able people enjoy. I also believe that when possible, whatever reasonable accommodations are necessary to empower people to achieve their potential should be taken.

By the way, when I talk about reasonable accommodations, I’m not one of those disabled people who think the world owes them something because they have a disability. On the contrary, I recognize that it takes more than my fair share of the world’s resources just to keep me alive, functioning, and able to contribute to the common good. That recognition manifests itself to motivate me to be as productive as I can be. I strongly believe in the idea of “Pay it Forward”.

There are those out there who would say that I’m suffering from internalized ableism or what I call self-ableism. They would claim that I had bought into the narrative that somehow I am an inferior person and feel the need to justify my continued existence.

I wholeheartedly agree that disability doesn’t make us worthless, helpless, hopeless, or undeserving of the things that able people routinely enjoy. But let’s get real people! Having a disability is not easy. It is an extraordinary, difficult, and often physically and emotionally painful set of circumstances that has the potential to break your will and drive you into depressed self-pity and deep bitterness and anger. It takes massive amounts of self-esteem, external support, and occasional good luck to survive a severe disability. Religious beliefs can also be a useful asset in this ongoing struggle.

When I hear disability advocates say something to the effect that disability is no big deal, it’s just a different way of being, all we need is our rights recognized, reasonable accommodations to allow us to be productive, and an improved attitude on the part of the general public, I want to cry bullshit. This is no fucking fun and I’m offended by their attitude that it’s no big deal.

This is coming from me, a person who has by many accounts a very positive attitude about my situation. I’m a person who is not typically bitter, angry, or routinely depressed by my circumstance. I just think it’s a massive amount of denial to claim there’s nothing “wrong” with this situation. Again depending upon your definition of “wrong”.

In my as-yet-unsuccessful quest to become a published science fiction author, I wrote a story about a guy who was on his deathbed. He had the same disability as I have. As he was lying there, his life slipping away, he heard a disembodied voice that offered him the opportunity to live his life over again without his disability. His consciousness would be transported back in time to the day of his birth and be implanted in a non-disabled version of himself. He was essentially given the opportunity to reboot his life to live it over again and see what it would’ve been like to not have his disability.

I hesitated to submit it for publication for fear of the backlash it might receive from the disability community. Many would criticize it for saying that it perpetuated ableist myths that a life with a disability was an undesirable situation.

By the way, I did submit it to several print and online science fiction/fantasy markets. I got a nice stack of rejection emails but I don’t think it had to do anything with the theme of the story. For whatever reason, they just weren’t interested nor were they interested in the nine other stories I’ve written and had routinely rejected. That’s a topic for a different day.
Put this attitude of, “it’s no big deal”, introspective and compare it to other major life challenges.

Would you say to a person who was trapped in poverty that they should accept their condition which was simply the hand of cards that life had dealt them? Would you say to a person in an underdeveloped country that the violence of perpetual war, food insecurity, and insurmountable poverty should be accepted as no big deal? What kind of abject insensitivity is that?
Let’s fantasize for a moment about living in an ideal world.

I can share in the dream of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in which people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. It is possible to build a society in which racial prejudice does not exist. That dream of true human equality is achievable. I can imagine that faced with life-threatening police violence and rampant hatred and racial prejudice some black people wake up in the morning and wish they weren’t black. However, the only negative aspect of being a particular race is the way in which that race is mistreated for arbitrary reasons. People of color ought not to ever see their race as anything negative. The disadvantages they face are societal. Although it would be difficult, we can change society to eliminate racism.

I can envision a society in which men and women are treated equally. While there are biological differences between the sexes, these differences in no way justify the mistreatment of one sex by the other. Neither men nor women should see their gender as a negative. The only reason it can be negative is because of the societal insistence that men or women be limited in their capabilities or opportunities and forced into particular roles. Those who find themselves identifying with neither of the traditional definitions of male nor female illustrate the inequity of pigeonholing people into arbitrary categories of gender. While one can celebrate their masculinity, femininity, and non-binary-ness (is that a word?), we can better recognize the human dignity of individuals when we do not impose our prejudices based on sex, gender, and sexual orientation. The disadvantages that people experience because of gender issues are completely societal and in an ideal society could be eliminated.

I also envision a world in which people with disabilities are not held back by the limited expectations imposed upon them. We can design a world in which physical barriers do not hinder the mobility of people with physical disabilities. We can have audible signs and warnings as well as ubiquitous braille labels and other accommodations for blind and visually impaired people. We could teach American Sign Language in elementary school so that large portions of the population could communicate with deaf and hearing-impaired people. Stigma could be removed from mental health needs and attitudes towards other less visible disabilities could be improved. We can create a society that respects the rights of disabled people and gives them opportunities to be productive members of society.

Even if I lived in such an idealized world where I didn’t have to worry about getting accessible accommodations… Even if I could count on continued attendant care in my own home and avoid institutionalization in a skilled nursing facility… Even if I could find employment that would not jeopardize my benefits… Even if I could marry someone and not have their income or my marital status risk my benefits… Even if all the negative things fixable about living with a disability were to be fixed… The day-to-day struggles of living with a disability would still be a pain in the ass.

My late friend Rick Ruiz who worked with me for three years as my home health aide would get me up in my wheelchair each morning and ask, “Are you comfortable?”

On one particularly bad day, I couldn’t help myself but give him a brutally honest answer. I said, “Rick… I have two dislocated hips and they’ve been that way for decades. The balls of my hip joints have painfully rubbed against my pelvis for so long that they have ground away the pelvic bone and cut themselves new sockets. I have such severe scoliosis that there are two 90° bends in my spine. I’m tightly strapped into a back brace which is essentially a plastic body cast without which I cannot fill my lungs to breathe. Early in the day, it digs into my thighs. By late in the day, it slips upward and digs into my armpits. I have no use of my arms or legs. I can barely drive my power wheelchair. [Had I been giving this speech today and not years ago, I would’ve added that I have a trach, G-tube, and suprapubic catheter.] Given all of this, the answer is no. I am in no way comfortable. But… I’m okay.” I asked him to change his daily question from, “Are you comfortable?” to “Are you okay?” When he would ask me, “Are you okay?” I would happily answer yes every day.

That’s a good summary of how I see my life. Living with a severe and increasingly worse disability over 67 years is in no way comfortable. I don’t seek sympathy or pity. Despite this rant, I’m not at all bitter or angry. But I’m okay. And being okay has allowed me to lead a reasonably happy and productive life.

Those who say that having a disability is not a negative thing either have not had a very severe disability or are living under a delusion.

As comedian Dennis Miller used to say as he ended his rant and signed off his HBO series each week, “Hey… that’s just my opinion… I could be wrong.”

In next week’s episode of “Contemplating Life,” we will take a deep dive into discussing how the words we use to describe disability shape our perception of disabled people.

As always, I welcome your comments.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and any other benefits I might come up with down the road. It’s not that I’m desperate for money, but a little extra income sure could help.

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please, post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.

Okay, PS… You may be wondering why I sign off with the words “fly safe” each week. I first heard the phrase used as a sign-off message by YouTuber Scott Manley. He is an expert on the aerospace industry and posts frequent videos about what’s going on in spaceflight news. I highly recommend his channel. He signs off that way each week. He has also mentioned that for a time, he was a frequent player of the outer space MMO “Eve Online”. When I started playing the game, I learned that that was the way many people sign off when leaving the game. I really like the phrase even outside the game. To encourage someone to “fly” to me means, “to reach for your highest potential.” But to say, “fly safe”, means be your best but be careful. Sure it’s bad grammar. It should be “fly safely” but that’s not the way they do it in the game. So, until next week, fly safe. Nor is it