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Where do I fit in?

Name: Jack Merica
Email: jmerica@uswest.net
Date: 20 Aug 2000
Time: 23:41:24

Story

It has recently occurred to me that I don't know where I fit in.

I was raised in the Los Angeles harbor area. I started school in the fall of 1964 at Harlan Shoemaker Elementary School in San Pedro, CA. This was a "handicapped children's school." After passing kindergarten and the first grade, my mother decided that I wasn't learning anything. She took me to our parish school, but the principal, a nun, said I couldn't attend because of my disability.

Mom next took me to a Pentecostal elementary school in Wilmington, CA, where I was accepted, provided I repeat the first grade (I couldn't read). Come the fall of 1966, I was in the first grade again in a school where I was the only student with a disability. Instant mainstream. I completed my primary education at this school and when, it came time to go to junior high, the principal at our neighborhood junior high school informed my parents that I couldn't attend the school; there were "special schools for students with my needs." It didn't matter that I spent the last six years competing, learning, playing and sometimes fighting with "normal" kids. All he saw was that I had a disability.

So, come the fall of 1972, I was bussed 25 miles to downtown Los Angeles to Joseph Pomeroy Widney High School. I spent 2 years at Widney, trying to figure out why I had been shunted aside. I had proven that I was as good as the "normal" kids, hadn't I?

The fall of 1974 saw me at a parochial school. Mom again decided that I wasn't being taught anything. That fall I made the freshman football team, but, after 3 weeks, I was told that insurance wouldn't cover me if I were injured. So I had to turn in my uniform. I kept to myself that year.

The next year, my sophomore year, I found myself at a boarding school in Scottsdale, AZ. My mother had decided that the parochial school was too frivolous and I needed to attend a school with "more structure." The next 3 years were spent in Arizona. I became independent. I learned to manage my money, wash my own clothes and do household chores. I also became quite a good horseman and a survivalist of sorts.

After graduation I went to a junior college and worked at part time jobs. I took a break from school for a couple of years and worked, first as a housepainter and then as a Floor Supervisor in a sheltered workshop. I got fired from the sheltered workshop and, after searching for employment for several months with no success, I decided to try and collect disability and go back to school. After six months, I was finally successful in collecting SSI/SSDA, and I attended Cal State University Dominguez Hills, majoring in Computer Science.

In the fall of 1986, a friend put together a proposal to employ the handicapped in high tech companies. I was offered an unpaid internship at a local aerospace company and after four months was hired full time. I've been with the company now for nearly 14 years.

I get along well with my co-workers, but I have few friends. When it comes lunchtime, I rarely go out with "the guys." I have yet to be asked to "poker night." Disabled people dislike me because I'm not a lockstep radical, taking offense to every slight that the ABs throw my way. Nor am I a "poor me" whiner. I'm considered arrogant and insensitive because of my stand that the disabled should make their own way and not wait for Uncle Sam to make it all better.

The ablebodied are uncomfortable around me and the disabled community considers me a "traitor," so where do I fit in?

Copyright © 2000 Jack Merica. All rights reserved.

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Re: Being left out

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Date: 16 Feb 2008
Time: 01:58:58

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