[ Home | Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Dara
Date: 16 Oct 2000
Time: 20:36:54
Remote Name: p104-251.atnt1.dialup.abq1.flash.net
As I was lying in bed the other night, all ready to take those easy steps to fall asleep as the television rays lull you to sleep with television sounds and television visions when suddenly – whoa! something had caught my attention! In this case, the attention-grabber was a professional football kicker advisor from Virginia who has a type of cerebral palsy and uses a power wheelchair full-time. The reason he was hired to advise pro-football kicking is his innate talent to make the right thing happen by his observations and advice. His mother says he’d had an interest in football since he was a toddler. So listened and watched. The man had made strides in ability to advise a kicker without ever having kicked a football himself. He was a mainstreamed child in education was taught right from the get-go that he could do anything he wants to. He is articulate, not camera-shy, proud of is work. Then the disappointing denoument. Although he was active in his town for getting handicapped parking spaces in various places and also for getting handicapped facilities here and there in his town, he himself refused to park in the handicapped spaces. He parked in the “other” spaces and left the handicapped for the handicapped. Don’t look back – you remember correctly – he’s a full-time wheelchair user. I wish I had paid attention to his name or more facts about his team or town. When asked about the reason he parked in the nonhandicapped spaces, he replied that it had to do with the stigma attached to handicapped people. I understand that the negative stigma he speaks of and repels truly exists. It has isolated many millions of people over the years. It has caused severe pain to those disabled and to the people who have loved them. It has ruined lives. It has strength and power and has been with us for all the ages of mankind. How can we take stigma out of our lives, how can we disable it, how can we stop feeding it with our own fear? I contend that pride is the answer. Not simple. But if we can, in every possible part of our lives as disabled people, spend our energy on developing and showing disability pride, and stop feeding the destructive stigmas, we can unempower the stigma. We can kick it to hell once and for all. Perhaps, in this man’s case, as he’s working with the epitome of physicality as football players are said to be, he needs to do what he does by the outright rejection of his disability and refusing to park in the spaces he himself spent energy and time creating. But what kind of dichotomy is that? Who does it help? What does it help to foster? We need to address our pride of living and being in this world as disabled individuals. We can’t split ourselves between “us” and “them” or there will never be a meeting of the minds. And we will never be rid of the demon of stigma. I hope to turn on television one day and see that this same man has kicked stigma out of his life as well as he trains those footballs to fly.
What do you think?
Dara