Read It In The Paper

There's a letter to the editor in today's Beacon Journal from the mother of an autistic child. She praises the Akron Public Schools, her family, etc., etc., but what caught my eye was her reference to the "Phil Donahue Syndrome," which made me laugh: I knew right away what she meant. We've been Donahued a time or two ourselves. Most people mean well. It's one of those situations where you can make a conscious decision not to be offended, on the grounds of "hey, they only think they know what they're talking about, whereas we DO know" and save your righteous anger for the rare occasion when offense IS intended, which, unfortunately, does happen. Not often, though.

Here are a few of the things that people have said to me that, at the time, made me fume, but now.... okay, depending on the day, I can still work up a pretty good snit. Mostly, though, I have to chuckle: HOW could you voice such....moronic....suppositions?

1) I love this one: "Didn't you have prenatal testing?" I laugh every time I remember the first time someone said this to me. I couldn't believe anyone could be so stupid. The next 500 times weren't quite as funny.

2) "You can't expect the public schools to deal with Sarah!" Well, gee, give me another option and I'll TAKE it. I don't know what people think is out there, educationwise.

3) "Have you considered home schooling?" THIS I heard at soooo many conferences/IEP meetings that I finally had to say something fairly rude in order to make my point: "You expect me to teach, in my dining room, a child that an entire school system can't figure out how to handle?"

Okay, I can feel my blood pressure going up. Maybe I'm not as well-adjusted as I thought.

Last weekend, when we had family here, we were looking at my niece's yearbooks and there was this one senior picture (this, I don't get. I think you ought to be required to have a standard head shot) where a boy was dressed as Superman. Believe me, he didn't look any loonier than most of the other seniors with their artfully crafted statements of individuality (my daughter Hannah told me last year that there was this popular tee shirt that said something like "Dare To Be Different" but that so many people wore it that it should have said, "Dare To Be Similar." I thought of that when I was leafing through the senior pictures, let me tell you) but my cow: the COMMENTS this kid drew from the crowd (all of whom are, yes, related to me.) Turns out the boy was in special ed. THIS cued up a replay of a story that makes me cringe, as MY DAUGHTER IS IN SPECIAL ED: my brother-in-law starts in with how there was this kid they went to school with who was in special ed and that's what they called him, like it was his name: "Special Ed." Ha ha. Really funny.