My Reflections

I revisited David's blog tonight and I have to admit that he has some excellent thoughts about the Ashley controversy. We will probably never agree about her parents decision but we can agree that more needs to be done to further the awareness of disabled community's plight.

David has obviously spent many anguishing hours over this situation. David also has obviously spent many hours invested in working the same therapies and tasks Ben is facing. In all honesty David is a man that my son can aspire to be. I cannot fault this young man in his drive and determination to live life to it's fullest.

He also asks an indirect but soul-searching question of us parents. How far do we go in protecting our children from "the world"? Should "the world" not accept those with handicaps as equal to those without? Of course I will say yes but from my previous post you can read how far "the world" has to go before that happens. It's a Catch-22. It's a conundrum in and of itself. I honestly have no answer.

As a young man I remember how I loved the gruesomeness of Alice Cooper and how he tried to make my parents' skin crawl. No such luck. They had faced the same dilemma a little over a decade earlier with the acceptance of Elvis into society. During that time, as they were birthing and raising me and my brothers, The Beatles and Martin Luther King, Jr. had entered and left "the building."

We grow. We change. We learn. And we accept. I'm horrified at my daughter knowing the lyrics and antics of Britney Spears, Marylin Manson, and other celebrities that use shock value to entertain us. And yet the persona of a profound disabled person leaves us with a propensity to either stare or just ignore them. That part has never changed.

We now accept as a norm anyone of any race into our society social circles while yet disabled folks are still some kind of "special people." David, I get it. All you want is to be a part of the social norm. I guess the bottom line is that we've come a long way but we still have a long way to go.