Sticks And Stones
12 April 2008 | 3:08 PM
Everybody has certain words or phrases that really tend to push their buttons. Face it, nobody on this planet is so magnanimous that literally nothing offends them. Sure, a lot of what makes some words offensive while other terms are acceptable is context: not just what a person is saying, but when they’re saying it (and why, I suppose). But still, even granting that, some things just cross a line.
When I was in grade school, middle school and high school, the words “retard”, “retarded” and “tard” were staples of my peers’ everyday conversations. (Come to think of it, the word “homo” was, too, but that – as my friend Eena would say is a whole other Oprah show). My lifelong recollection is those terms made me wince palpably when I heard them, and I always had misgivings about the words’ use. But while I never actually referred to people, situations or activities as “tards” or “retarded”, I also never worked up the moxie to challenge my classmates about it, either. Yeah yeah, it was school, and I spent most of my formative years trying to fly as far below the radar as possible, but still, I never said anything. I don’t mean to make it sound like I lost sleep over it, either: while there were people and kids with disabilities in my community and schools, my interaction with them was so infrequent and brief that I didn’t feel enough of a connection with any of them which might prompt me to pound my fist in righteous outrage. The bottom line was that the use of those terms was sort of like LSD: I knew some of my peers were into it, but I kept out of it and felt that was good enough to keep my nose clean.
Flash forward twenty years or so, and I find myself with an amazing and beautiful son who also happens to be cognitively and physically disabled. The tendency now – especially in the first weeks, months and years after his birth – is to be acutely aware of people using those words around me and my family. These days, I often do pipe up when friends, acquaintances or even complete strangers drop that kind of language, and sometimes such situations get kind of confrontational, especially when it happens in front of (or, even in some rare cases) directed at one of my kids. I’m always diplomatic about it at first, but I’ll press the point of the person (particularly if it’s an adult) is dismissive of my objection. Some of these instances have been so weird or utterly outrageous that they don’t seem to jibe with any sense of how the real world ought to be. Once, while shopping at a hardware store with my son, who at the time was about four months old, an elderly lady approached me and took it upon herself to ask me if he’d been baptized yet, since “even retards have original sin.” I was so stunned I almost lost the ability to tell her to go fuck herself. Almost. In any event, most times the person saying the word has no idea that they’re using it, and is mortified and apologetic when it’s been pointed out. My goal is not to shame anyone into the appropriate behavior. Rather, it’s to bring the terms’ use out of the abstract and make them understand how insulting and bone-headed it is on a personal level.
This morning, while attending a kids’ festival in downtown Madison (along with seemingly every other breeder family in the county), we took our seats in preparation for a rousing performance of Rock Star Gomeroke®. A few minutes later, a couple with an infant son came in and sat down beside us. I had no intention to eavesdrop, but they were loudly complaining to one another about what sounded like a home improvement project that had gone terribly awry. In a two minute span, both adults repeatedly used the word “retarded” to describe how fucked up the situation was, and the fella constantly referred to the subcontractors they had apparently employed as “total retards”. Still, this was supposed to be a fun morning, and I was prepared to just tune it out and let it go. But then my daughter, who has an incredibly talent for mimicry, began to stomp her foot in an imitation of the lady behind her, each time lisping out a variation on “that’s so retarded”. OK, so that’s not cool. I turned around and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but could you please stop saying ‘retard’ and ‘retarded’ like that? They’re really, really offensive and it’s not something I’d like my kids to be exposed to.” I did my best to say this in a genial fashion, but I also was clearly a little pissed that these fools had unwittingly introduced my daughter to such ugly language. (For the record, hateful speech is pretty much the only stuff that’ll make me rise up and badger someone about it: they could be cursing like a sailor, but I figure at that stage if I don’t want my kids to learn how to drop F-bombs yet, I can get up and move to escape the swearing.) The couple looked mortified all right, but not at being called out for being so offensive: rather, they were pissed that we had been privy to their conversation. They loudly made a show of gathering up all their things in a huff and storming over to another part of the small ampitheater, but didn’t say word one to me, apology or otherwise.
Ultimately, things were fine after that. The dummies with the narrow minds were on the other side of the room (presumably filling their newborn son’s head with all sorts of new euphemisms for doughy Jewish guys), and my kids and I proceeded to rock the morning away, and hard. But part of me wanted to chase after them, to beat them over the head with some expansive rhetoric and reason, and if that didn’t work beat them over the head with my fists. Their reaction gnawed at me all morning, and clearly has continued to gnaw at me this afternoon. I worry that maybe I approached them in the wrong manner, or that maybe by being so curt I didn’t advocate well for my son. I was more intent, I guess, on demonstrating to both of my kids just how unacceptable that sort of blather is, and perhaps I didn’t take the opportunity to inform rather than embarrass. But another part of me wants to wring their little yuppie necks. They’re knocking about town somewhere right now, slowly teaching their own child that words don’t matter, that it’s all right to equate difference to being less-than, and I have to say it chaps my ass.
In the end, I’m reminding myself not to spend time fretting about those people, that the only people whose attitudes really matter in all this are the people and loved ones who have roles to play in my kids’ lives. But I will say that it’s hard to be Zen when someone attempts to invalidate a person you cherish, no matter what the setting.
Posted by Andy in Navel Gazing