Differently Abled
Funny Kid stories 1 Comment »Today I want to tell you about my sons’ friend Ben. But first I’m going to wax on with a bit of background, cuz that’s how I make a good story. 
Ive worked a bit with people with disabilities in the past. I think we’re allowed to call them disabled. When I was a kid it used to be OK to say ‘retarded’ about a person with an intellectual disability. And a person with cerebral palsy was spastic. Remember that? Then words like ‘retarded’ and ’spastic’ got made taboo. Spastic got replaced by ‘cerebral palsy’, which is fair enough. Retarded, on the other hand, was replaced by ‘developmentally delayed’. 
That is not only hard to say, but it also kind of implies that the person is just running a bit late and will be here eventually with the rest of us. “I’ve just been delayed for your dinner party, but I will be there.” Believe me, some developmentally delayed people are never, ever going to catch up, no matter how optimistic you want to be. I think after a while someone realized that, because then it got changed to ’special needs’. I used to be a ‘carer’, and my ‘clients’ had ’special needs’. And special needs is a euphemism of course. You could say my Dad has special needs - when he goes on a Qantas flight, his special need is to have the low-fat airline dinner. However, with ’special needs’ clients, we are NOT talking about a special dinner every so often. We are talking major care: help to eat and talk and move and keep clean and maybe even breathe. And that could be 24 hours a day.
Let’s talk about the word ’special’. Does the word special mean ‘different, unique, and rare’? It does to me. When I say ‘you are very special’ to someone I love, that means, you are unique and I treasure you. And it implies something positive. And rare. 
Now, I think someone finally figured out that calling disabled people ’special needs’ people was not only a misnomer it was possibly also a bit cruel. Because now after about 25 years we are once again able to say they have a disability. Phew!!! 
And now I am going to talk about Differently Abled, because that is a term that I truly like. In all my work with people with brain injuries and various sorts of disabilities, I have met some extraordinary people who I can quite honestly say were outstandingly able. They might have had a disability in one area, but made up for it by compensating in other areas. Take John for example. John was a 47 year old man who owned his own printing company. He was very successful, and he loved cars. He had a garage full of different sorts of cars, including a very rare old model T Ford. One day for no reason at all an artery burst in John’s brain, which pretty much wrecked his vision, and gave him a limp. John’s wife didn’t think John was going to be successful anymore, and that wasn’t sexy to her, so she left. Now, you might be thinking, that would pretty much wreck his life. But it didn’t.
When I met John he lived in a beautiful apartment with a waterfront. He was still the managing director of his business and he had hired other guys he trusted and liked to do the work he couldn’t do anymore. He had a bit of a Pied-Piper personality and he knew it, so he capitalized on that. Anytime he wanted to go out in one of his cars, someone from his gang at work would just show up and do the driving for him. Wherever he went, it as party city. And the business continues to do just fine.
WOO-HOO!!!! 
Now, I come to the part about my sons’ friend called Ben. And this is the funniest, best Differently Abled story I know. Ben was born with only one hand. He is right handed, but his right hand just isn’t there. It is a stump with a vestigial thumb. Ben is very smart at maths. And, he is very creative. He likes to draw and put together comic magazines and get other kids to draw for his magazines too. One day Ben came over to our house with a video camera. The kids came up with an idea for a movie and they set about making it. Ben was the one with heaps of great ideas about how to set up the scenes so they would tell a story. He also had cool ideas like making the character ‘invisible’ by turning the camera off and getting the person to leave the scene, but then have someone else continue to pretend to bump into them. (This kid is great.)
But, best of all, at one point the character played by Ben got attacked with a sword, and his hand got chopped off (just like when Luke Skywalker’s hand got lopped off with a light sabre in Return of the Jedi). Suddenly there is a close up of Ben’s stumpy right hand, with tomato sauce dripping from it, and he’s going “ohhh, my hand!”
A ready-made stunt hand! 
Now, that is what I call a creative use of one’s disability! BEN…. 
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