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Has segregation from nondisabled others helped or hurt you? Why?

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Smouse School

Name: Dick
Email: http://www.richardmonks.com/
Date: 22 Apr 2000
Time: 17:35:23
Remote Name: a24b31n66client230.hawaii.rr.com

Story

After six months recovery in the hospital, on release in 1959, it was probably a good thing they sent me to Smouse School, a school for disabled children. I hated the idea, though. They never really could explain it to me. My own school, Webster, had a fair number of bad kids, it was no middle class area. But I hated so much that at Smouse I was being categorized as different, even though the residuals of polio, a leg brace and initial difficulty in walking made me different.

I missed school as often as I could and got the worst grades ever. Third Grade started with a bang -- polio. Six months of hospital stay ended with a whimper. I pretended I was sick as often as possible. I experienced a loathing of being placed among others with problems like my own, some more severe.

By the time summer came, we moved and I insisted on going to a "regular" school in St. Paul, Minnesota, rather than the city's handicapped school. It wasn't for the most progressive of reasons. It was more because I was loath to be identified with others who had problems like mine, many more severe than mine. Together with a "normal" friend I even shunned a kid with MS once. I walked away from him with my friend to leave him behind as he looked at us crying that we would not let him walk with us. My walk may have been funny but his was even worse, and I thought people would laugh to see the two of us together.

I got through life pretty much with this denial. It wasn't until my forty's that I stopped feeling self-conscious with disabilities others may have. My own disability is most obvious and the first category people put me in until they meet me further. Even though it keeps most "guys" and "girls" from wanting to pal around with me, go to lunch, whatever, I attribute the feelings I had about being seen with others who had disabilities to a lack of counseling resources. In retrospect, I should have gotten that as a child and adolescent, but never did.

I strongly urge counseling for parents, their children with disabilities and siblings, so they can get over many of these difficulties before they set in during young adulthood.

Copyright © 2000 Richard Monks. All rights reserved.

Last changed: February 19, 2008

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Date: 19 Feb 2008
Time: 02:53:30
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