A friend writes that my post about going out on Halloween dressed as a normal person is really funny, then adds: I was a normal person once. That got me to thinking about having a normative identity for though I’ve never been a normal person, what would I have been like had fate been otherwise? I’m forced to conclude that I would have been a real jerk. I know exactly what kind of jerk I’d have been. Yep. The fantasma-normal version of me would have been a grade A asshole.
Flashback: junior year of high school. Partially sighted. A friend tells me I should try out for the track team. The coach sez I’m too blind. Let’s me practice for a week. Gives me a uniform and sweat suit. Then, one day as I’m walking home a car pulls up at the curb. The coach is driving. Its a “Driver Ed” vehicle. He has four of my classmates in the car with him. The coach leans out the window and tells me I have to give back my uniform; announces I’m too blind to be on the team, etc. And the four guys snicker. And yes, I went home and cried alone in my curtained attic cloister. I still remember how alone I felt. God, how lonely I was.
If I could have been a sighted teenager I’d have been a thug. A kind of Robin Hood thug. I’d have let the air out of the coaches tires. I’d have pulled fire alarms and run like hell for the sheer glory of it. I’d have climbed a flag pole and refused to come down, like Jonathan Winters. I’d have driven around in a car with chicken wire for a windshield delivering stolen pies to the elderly. In short I’d have been me but sighted. And I’d still have been lonely. There’s nothing you can do about loneliness except keep moving. So I’d have moved faster perhaps. I’d have been a cross between Groucho and Speedy Gonzales. I’d have stolen and run but always on behalf of the lonely and the shut ins.
I know for a fact I’d never have been a back seat snickerer in a car driven by a smug high school track coach.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
You’re right of course…your post about Hallowe’en made me think hard about who I was before my daughter became disabled. Possibly because I was always an outcast too (you don’t have to be disabled to be treated like shit at school), I was never totally a bitch, but I fell for many of the stereotypes about disability…the tragedy, the heroism, the terrible secret of having a kid who was a retard hidden from public view…knew all about it. Now I know better and am better.
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