Those pro-life signs around town.

[elfs]

When I was a young boy of 10, my parents were already in a downward spiral and headed for an amiable divorce (for them, rather nasty for the kids) that would let him pursue his womanizing hobby and her a downward spiral of stress and alcohol. Hey, it was 1977; alcohol, cocaine, disco, and The Joy of Sex were all the rage. After the divorce, he moved in with a friend of his who probably did duty as his wing, kept his pot hidden in a plexiglass photo of me and my siblings next to his bed, and was generally more interested in having what they called in the 70's "authenticity" than being a father.

I was a pain in the neck kid with serious ADD and nowhere to go with it, so my parents got suckered into sending me to a school where the staff supposedly had skills in dealing with kids like me.

("Hyperactive and disruptive," the report said; I was to learn two years later that it also said I had "latent homosexuality." Well, at least it wasn't wrong.)

The school was pretty much a fraud. It was so bad that it wasn't until a few years ago that I recognized what I was doing on my second-to-last day there, when I was twelve: I was helping to destory evidence, because the school was being shut down. I was disposing of "embarrassing" records of how little the school had done to help the kids who were there. While I was there, the school's community was effectively split in half: those kids who were mentally retarded, and those who were simply trouble. The "troubled" kids included me, Charles, and Kim: Charles was there because he already knew he was gay (and his parents wanted him fixed), and Kim was there because at 12 she already knew she liked sex (ditto). There was also a boy of 13 with the self-imposed nickname "Frog;" he had a cleft palette and a nasty disposition. He raped Kim one afternoon in the back of a broken-down schoolbus. Nothing was ever done about it.

Unblessed

But the teachers soldiered on. They did their best. And that brings me to the subject of this post: those pro-life signs around town that read "Our brother is a blessing! He has Down's syndrome." Because I was thrown into a classroom with all the other kids, "mainstreamed" as the public schools like to call it, so I was there when the boy in front of me lifted his head and said, "Miss Bartholemew? Are farts solid?"

"No, Danny, they're not," she said with that resignation that only emerges from knowing what comes next.

"Oh," he said. "Then I think I just shit my pants."

Now, I'm not doing this to paint my tragic childhood and go all Million Little Pieces on you. Actually, my childhood went pretty well, all things considered. There is this two-year hole in it, though, where I'd much rather recall idyllic summers in Connecticut away from my family than that psychic superfund site of a "school."

But I think about Danny, and that day, and the smell we all had to put with, even if they did usher him out of the classroom soon thereafter, every time I see that sign.

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I'm somewhat older than you, but I came close to being caught by the idea that awkward children should be packed off to special schools.

I don't know how the teacher training, now and then, compares. I hope they're better trained to recognise the difference between being intelligent, and bored, and being somehow psychologically defective. What worries me is that the best teachers I can recall were those who had been outside of schools for a few years, and my contemporaries who were going into teaching went from school to university to teacher-training, and back to a school.

Mind you, a teacher of French who had been rioting in Paris in 1968 has more life-experience than most, and I'm not sure it made him a better teacher. Maybe I just don't have a talent for languages.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Since I assume Charles and Kim were friends, did you keep up with them, or ever Google them?

[rarkrarkrark.livejournal.com]

I'm a decade younger than you. Because my parents didn't believe in that sort of thing they wouldn't let me be tested for learning disabilities and the like, so I avoided the schools. Instead I got to spend the very tail end of my adolescence in a mental hospital for "psychotically" turning my parents in for child abuse. There I met the girl who was there because her idea of a good career path and her parents' was quite different, the girls who were there because they were "promiscuous" (with one or two boyfriends) and the girl who was there because she was supposed to learn what she was doing to encourage multiple gang rapes. I was the one who got told that if I accepted that I was a girl and that I was supposed to have sex with boys, not be a boy, I'd be "cured."

But then, near as I can tell, these days the difference between such schools and psych wards is billing and maybe where one sleeps at night. (Though with psych ward day programs and boarding special needs schools the second criteria is rather blurry)

Incidently, there's a lot of variation in people with down syndrome, esspecially now that early intervention improves things, and the tests are not 100% accurate and *definitely* can't tell who will be severely affected and who will be mildly affected. I'm generally pro-choice, but I find the pressure put on a lot of women by doctors to abort probably-down's fetuses to be highly questionable. pro-choice means *choice* dammit. And there's always the eugenics question as well.

Of course, I'm biased because a lot of people would like to see all people like me aborted before birth too.

[orcaarrow.livejournal.com]

I like to ask people protesting against abortion, "How many children have you adopted?"

You know I've never gotten an answer.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Charles was a friend. Kim was not, sadly. And no, I haven't kept in touch with them. I was 12 when the school shut down, and not inclined to keep contact with anything that reminded me of that place.

[ewhac.livejournal.com]

There is this two-year hole in it, though, where I'd much rather recall idyllic summers in Connecticut away from my family than that psychic superfund site of a "school." [emphasis mine]

Dammit dammit dammit! I thought I'd had it nailed when I described my middle school as a, "emotional and psychological abattoir." But your turn of phrase trumps mine.

I need to write more...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's not too bad. It needs rearrangement though.