Retarded
by
Jeff Stimpson © 2007
"Retarded" as been used three times in the past
six months aloud in my office, usually in reference to someone - a
vendor, a source, someone who holds a job - doing something dumb.
"That's retarded!" "He's so retarded!" "I'm not a retard!" Each
time, the word flew right out of a cubicle, clear and loud, for all
to hear. I think anyone older than 5 could imagine many words that
would cause quite a stir, and a lawsuit, if they flew right out of
cubicles. "Retarded" and "retard," so far, don't seem to be among
those words.
Words change. "Special needs" seems to have
replaced "challenged," which replaced "retarded," I guess, though
I've come to this game relatively recently and may not have the
etymology right. "Retarded" has really stuck around, though. I
Googled the word and turned up more than 19.1 million hits,
including a band with the name (which somehow popped up first among
the 19 million), retardedhumor.com, "retarded animal babies," and
"movie criticism for the retarded" (which on Google scores right
ahead of "Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons").
Jill and I often think of how Alex looks to other
people: on the street, in restaurants, at the airport and on the bus
and the subway. Many people still look at Alex; when I say "look at"
I mean in that honest way that shows they'd like to engage him.
Sometimes Alex notices them, sometimes not. Sometimes he answers
them in a somewhat appropriate way if they ask him a question; often
not. "That's the way they communicate," one woman said to me once in
a McDonalds, meaning autistic people, about whom she seemed to know
something; I somehow thought it a kind observation, though I was
just guessing. As usual. In general, people still look at Alex more
or less with kindness, as if to say, There's still time for me to
look at him like this.
A co-worker once came up to me mid-afternoon of a
workday. "Do you ever go to the park over by the river to eat your
lunch?" he asked. I said no. "The guys from the special school go
there," he said. "They sit on the benches and drool!" And
this particular co-worker is a nice guy.
Alex remains, at age 8, a nice-looking kid. Dark
hair and eyes. Eyebrows that women love both on themselves and on
men. A killer glance, when he makes eye contact. Slim, downright
skinny; it'd be hard for most people older than 5 to see him as any
kind of threat. Unless you count the 2-year old he slapped on the
playground two summers ago. She probably saw him as a threat.
"It's one thing if you have a cute little boy
acting like that," Jill has said. "But he isn't going to be a cute
little boy forever."
There was a guy on a playground a few summers ago.
He was a big teenager with a tiny shaved head and five 'o clock
shadow. He looked familiar to me, somehow, as he loped through the
playground, seeing nobody. Little kids scattered before him like
fish. And an "older" guy from a special-needs high school in Ned's
school building got into the first-grade classroom the other day.
"He had black hair. He ran in and sat on the teacher's chair," Ned
recalls, adding that he himself hid under his desk until somebody
came and fetched the young man. A few days after that incident, when
Jill picked Ned up from school, Ned's teacher said Ned was great
when the guy came in, telling her not to be scared and that the guy
was just "sensitive, like my brother."
I tried to explain to Ned that the young man was
indeed probably a lot like Alex. "I was scared," Ned said. I
explained that the young man wouldn't have hurt Ned, but even as I
said I wondered if I was absolutely right.
Copyright 2005 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
