CapriUni, good points!

People with severe disabilities — another viewpoint:—

I had polio when I was two years old and have had to walk with canes or crutches and a leg brace all my life. About twelve years ago I had to take to a wheelchair. Despite this, I've had a pretty rich, full life (far from over yet!), including spending a lot of time on stage or generally up in front of people singing and playing the guitar. In fact, I made my living that way for better than ten years during the Fifties and Sixties.

Before I started singing in public, I became aware that there were people who, when meeting me for the first time, seemed to jump to the conclusion that because my legs didn't work, my mind didn't either. Now that I'm in a wheelchair, this sort of thing has intensified. Since my shoulders are shot (walking for decades with crutches can do that), my wife Barbara pushes me if we have to go any distance. I'm amazed by the number of people who, when we meet for the first time, will talk to Barbara, but will not address me directly. They will ask questions such as "How long has your husband been like that?" as if I'm oblivious—an object—not even there. Barbara's response to this is a cool, "Why don't you ask him?" (I do seem to be able to talk okay. After all, in addition to singing, I worked as a radio announcer and newscaster for about eight years.)

A friend (I first met him when he came to me for guitar lessons) told me, "I first heard about you from someone who told me that you were singing a folk concert at the Granada Theater and that if I liked in folk music, I should go and hear you. He talked a lot about you—but I was surprised when I saw you walk out on stage on crutches, with someone else carrying your guitar for you. All he talked about was your singing. It never occurred to him to mentioned that you walked with crutches!" He and I had palled around together for a couple of years before he told me this. He went on to say, "It didn't take me long to accept the idea of the crutches. You're a busy guy and you seem to get around okay, and you seem to be able to do just about anything you want, so I have a hard time thinking of you as 'handicapped.' Hell, I wear glasses, you use crutches, and that's about all there is to it!" One of the things that made Loren a good friend was that he saw me pretty much the way I saw myself.

When I was in a hospital in Denver in the mid-Fifties undergoing intensive physical therapy, I met a young man with cerebral palsy. He could not control most of the movements of his body and his speech was very difficult to understand. But once I took the time to listen carefully to him and figure out what he was saying, I learned that he was sharp and fully aware. He had a fine, quick mind. But it was trapped in a body that didn't work very well. Looking back on it now, he puts me in mind of Stephen Hawking.

I would suggest that when you meet someone who is severely disabled, if you begin with the attitude that they are a whole person and hold assumptions in abeyance, you will learn fairly quickly what they can't do. But you will also learn that there are a surprising number of things that they can do!

Anybody see the series I, Claudius on PBS some years back? Some historians think that Claudius (played brilliantly by Derek Jacobi) had had polio, but from the symptoms described, it sounds more like cerebral palsy. Most people took it for granted that Claudius was the court idiot. Had he not been part of the family of Caesar Augustus, he would have been "exposed," i.e., just dumped somewhere to die, which was the practice in those days. Then, after the assassination of Caligula, Claudius was made emperor—as a joke! First horrified at the prospect, he decides to take it seriously and calls his court together. He tells them, "There are those who say that I am hard of hearing. But this is not through want of listening. There are those who say that I stammer. But I have always thought that what a man says is more important than how he says it. And there are those who say that I am half-witted. Yet, with half my wits, I am still alive, while many of those around me who had all of theirs are now dead!"

Just a few random thoughts on a Wednesday morning.

Don Firth