You haven’t read anything from me since early last week. It’s not because I got sick and ended up I the hospital or anything dramatic like that. I just haven’t been feeling me lately. I’ve not had a bad week but I’ve not had a great one. Sometimes that happens. To look at me you’d probably not notice much, if any difference. Most of the time I look neither disabled nor chronically ill, yet both of those I am.
Neither of those necessarily has anything to do with the other of those. I, you, or anyone else can be one, the other, both, or neither, and it would all be perfectly normal. Except for those who are not perfectly normal.
If I had to pick which to be I’d go with the neither option. Being chronically ill is a little easier in society. There are lots of support groups for almost any chronic illness you can name, from “basic” high blood pressure to the more exotic diseases and conditions of which two have taken residence in me. Most chronic illnesses do not result in a disability but the ones that do quite make up for that vast silent majority of those that don’t. Even those leave most people looking like there is little, if any wrong goings on under an otherwise fairly healthy looking skin.
Being disabled is also no picnic. I’m lucky that I still have most of my abilities available. I might be able to imagine a world where I am dependent on others for daily functions that you take for granted like washing behind your ears or making a cup of tea. But I can’t imagine what it’s like to be dependent on people’s foresight and planning to permit me to do those other things you take for granted like opening a door or stepping up onto a curb.
Whether overtly disabled, like a paraplegic in a wheelchair, or with a hidden disability that doesn’t affect mobility until you’ve taking the first 30 steps then can go no farther, there isn’t a whole lot of acceptance and accommodation going on out there. Wearing ribbons and outlining parking spaces in blue just don’t add that much to my quality of life. Sorry.
If you don’t read “Help Codi Heal” you should. Codi is a young wife and mother of three who was living her life when she was injured in a fall two years ago and now is living her life in a wheelchair. Because she is seen differently now, in a recent post she wondered how she would teach her children to accept life’s differences. Her dilemma came as she wondered how you teach acceptance of differences without pointing out the differences. Her not quite 4 year old taught her children don’t have to be taught acceptance. They are naturally accepting. So then, the new dilemma is how do you get them to stay that way?
I think the answer is, you don’t. Leave it alone and let the children grow into being accepting adults organically. They won’t turn out to be ogres. I’m certain the amount of non-acceptance is directly proportional to a society’s extent of sensitivity training. The more we try to “teach” acceptance, diversity, inclusion, and affirmation, the more we turn away, divide, exclude, and deny.
Our attempts at equal rights for anything have never really succeeded. We manage to call so much attention to the inequalities and attempting to right past wrongs we never get around to actually addressing the actions that made the thing wrong.
Let me tell you a true story. In 1972, I applied for a summer job at the local steel mill. That was when many companies were feeling pressure from regulators to comply with what was then called affirmative action, ten years after the regulations went into effect. I went through all the necessary applications and tests and was in an interview with the personnel manager who told me that he’d love to hire me but he really needed “a black or female student to even things up” for that summer. No discussion of my ability or inability to do the job, just what he needed to do to “even things up.” That phrase stayed with me and at every job I ever applied for in the next 40 years I heard it in my head. I always wondered if I’d be competing against any minorities and would I be unfairly dismissed because I wasn’t one. Real or no, that was a perception that stayed with me for a lifetime.
Forty years later when I was the hiring manager, I was required to give each applicant a form to voluntarily complete after the interview. It asked the applicant’s sex (male, female, other), race (optional), ethnic background (of a select handful), and veteran status. This was sealed and sent to a third party to tabulate to determine if we were interviewing from a pool of applicants representative of our local population. No question of the job we were interviewing for, education or experiential requirements for the job, or if the applicants who responded were representative of the population. Real or no, pressure was felt every time I had to make a decision among applicants of diverse backgrounds, even if their professional backgrounds were also quite diverse.
How do we address the elephant in the room? If you ask a roomful of 3 year olds they would probably say, “Look, an elephant! Let’s play.” How do we get the three year old grow up to be 23 with that same innocence and acceptance? Just leave them alone.
They’ll figure it out.
Again, thank you for staying on the journey with me. Coincidence continues. This month my transplant evaluation coincides with National Donate Life Month. Every April, Donate Life America celebrates National Donate Life Month, focusing national attention on every individual’s power to make life possible by registering as an organ, eye, and tissue donor, and learning more about living donation. Many years ago I registered to be a donor. That was long before I ever suspected I would someday be looking at transplants from a recipient’s perspective. If you’d like to explore becoming an organ or tissue donor, check with your local transplant center, your personal physician or the 
I wrote this post while at dialysis Saturday afternoon. I had not seen the news Friday night or Saturday morning and was unaware that on Friday afternoon a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team from Humboldt, Saskatchewan was involved in a deadly traffic accident. The team featured players 16 to 20 years old. Among 15 killed in the accident were 11 players, 2 coaches, a radio announcer, and a statistician. My sympathies go to their families and friends, the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, and the entire Canadian hockey family. I mean no disrespect to the memories of these young people and their supporters and hope that by my words, I can honor them.
The Little Scamp
But as is so often the case, the biggest seem to have the least. And Easter is the biggest for the Christian community for if not for Easter there would be no Christian community. But still the fewest and the least. There just aren’t those big events we associate with the holiday outside of the church.
My own little family is no exception. Although there are our every year church activities and things we do most of the time, we have but one family tradition we’ve done every year since my daughter was old enough to sit at the table and spill colored water about the kitchen. Dying Easter eggs on Holy Saturday. This year since my dialysis schedule has me sitting in a chair not at the kitchen table most of this Saturday, we rescheduled our egg dying for today, Holy Thursday.
Traditions are good for that. Connecting seasons with the people. Take the opportunity this season to start or continue your own tradition. Whatever season you want to celebrate, Easter, Spring or Baseball, can be a chance to make new or stronger connections with the people most important to you.
Have you seen the new Internet food fad, donut chips? The last time I was at the store I purposely sought out day old donuts to try them. What you’re supposed to do is split your leftover donut in half so you have two skinny disks. Then you coat these in sugar and cinnamon and press them in a panini press. Don’t waste your time. Or your donuts. Unless you like flat, scorched, stale donuts.
It’s been eleven days since we changed our clocks to Daylight Saving Time and I still have one clock that hasn’t’ been advanced yet. If people want an extra hour of daylight in the summer why don’t they just get up an hour earlier?
Everyone in America can probably tell you that before this momentous occasion, the number one seeds had gone 135-0 in these first round games against number 16 seeds. Nobody mentioned that was the first time that happened in the 79 year history of the tournament. One can argue that there have not been 16 seeds for all those years. For the first 12 years there were only 8 teams invited to play in the tournament. The current four region, 64 team, 4 round format (excluding the 4 team preliminary play-in round) was initiated in 1985. Even so, that’s been 33 years, over 50% longer than most of the kids playing in the tournament have been alive.
The Real Reality Show Blog 