Sigh…Joy.

The Holiday Time Warp

> It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m watching the usual Christmas Eve TV fare-“A Christmas Story,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and some Lifetime movie starring Nancy McKeon that allows me to type this out without paying attention while still being able to follow the storyline when I decide to tune back in.

The commercials that are running during these shows are declaring Christmas officially over (most noticeably, and offensively, Old Navy), so you should attend their clearance sale on Monday. This is pissing me off, but this is also what we call “Alyne Pace.”

Alyne never really revels in the moment. Rather, she forges ahead and asks about the next thing on her agenda. Rest assured that at the holiday party tonight she asked about Christmas tomorrow and told everyone “night-night” at 7:15, so that Christmas can come faster. Christmas morning will come, and she will ask about Christmas dinner 817 times. Christmas dinner will come, and she will ask about New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve will come, and she will ask about her New Year’s black-eyed peas (we eat black-eyed peas for luck, collard greens for money on New Year’s.) While she’s shoveling in her New Year’s dinner, she will ask about her Super Bowl party. This never ends.

So, before it is Valentine’s Day in Alyne’s mind, let me wish you all a Merry Christmas! And a Happy New Year! Joyous Super Bowl! Amen!

Gym Shorts

Richard Simmons was in town last night and nobody told me. NOBODY TOLD ME! Out of all of the millions of exercise videos I’ve watched (notice that I didn’t say “millions of exercise videos I’ve exercised to”), his are my favorite because he’s bubbly and funny and flamboyant. He came up with Deal-A-Meal. Meals on cards? Excellent idea. Have you ever played Go Fish? Where you have such an enormous hand of cards that you can’t hold them all? I have a feeling that is how I would use Deal-A-Meal. I can eat small meals, as long as I get several meals a day. There’s a lot of goodness in Richard Simmons. He visits his clients, he inspires hordes of middle-aged, overweight women, and he honestly believes in his life mission to help people get fit and healthy.

Somewhere along the line, we decided that Alyne would like Richard Simmons. It probably had something to do with his sequined tank top (Alyne really likes sparkles and spangles and sequins and prisms); or maybe it was his crazy hair, or perhaps there was a song on “Sweatin’ With the Oldies,” “Disco Sweat,” or “Boogie Down the Pounds” that Alyne liked. About a decade ago, we decided that a copy of one of his exercise videos would be a great gift for her birthday.

What a crappy idea.

She opened up the package, sat it on the counter, and moved on to the next gift. And that was the last bit of attention that she ever paid to Richard Simmons. That video still exists in Alyne’s video closet, still wrapped in cellophane, right next to her copy of “Herbie: Fully Loaded”, starring Lindsay Lohan. Alyne hasn’t watched that either.

I guess she has a right to ignore that Richard Simmons video. I’d be pissed too, if somebody gave me exercise equipment as a gift. Actually, the last Valentine’s Day that I was married, my then-husband gave me the gift of running shoes. Yuck. It’s no wonder she doesn’t divorce us all.

Bungle in the Jungle

On the photos page of this blog there is a picture of Alyne wearing a big hat. This was taken from a day at the Dallas Zoo, where Alyne’s Grandma (who we call “Big Momma”, just like they do in the movie Soul Food) has been a docent for the past 20 years. Big Momma knows all the ins-and-outs of the zoo. She’ll take you through all the secret passages. She knows the places on the exhibits where you can have the best view of the animals. She also knows all the dirty little secrets of the zoo, like when the gorillas have mated, when one zebra kicks another, and when the flamingo babies are feeding. So going to the Dallas Zoo with Big Momma is like having your own elite private tour guide, one with a thick Texas accent that makes great breakfasts, and will yell at you when you stick a fork into her kitchen table, but the table was made of a soft wood and it was only a matter of time until that happened.

Alyne likes the zoo in theory, but she likes the aquarium better (she likes water.) She’s not a huge fan of all that walking around, but she knows that at some point she’s going to be able to get lunch at a place that is not her mother’s kitchen, so she puts up with a couple hours of meandering, and manages to ask about lunch about only once every five minutes.

The Dallas Zoo has a place called the Serengeti Grill, which has a wall of windows that backs right up to the lion exhibit. That’s where Alyne’s gang went for lunch. They scoped out a table along the window wall. As Alyne sat down at the table, a male lion came right up to the window behind her, like he was greeting an old friend (Alyne is a Leo, after all.) He put on a bit of a display for her, pawing the glass and shaking his mane, although her back was turned to him.

Everyone was so excited. “Alyne, turn around! Look! A lion!” Seriously, if the window had not been there, Alyne could have reached out and smacked the lion on the nose. It was a moment that every zoo visitor hopes to have: a meaningful interaction with one of the majestic big cats that doesn’t involve being mauled. Alyne glanced over her shoulder, barely looked at the giant cat, nodded, turned back around, and tended to the important matters at hand: she used sign language to order herself a hamburger.

Call to Action

Yesterday I wrote a post about a special needs child who was bullied by her teacher and the teacher’s aide. The aide was fired, but the teacher was not. I don’t know why not, but if I had to hazard a guess, it probably has plenty to do with the teacher’s union fighting for her. Today, somebody (not me) began an online petition to get this teacher fired. Now, after fully examining the karmic ramifications of this and deciding that I am in the right, I am going to ask you to sign it.

It doesn’t matter than the student was a special needs student, although that takes the situation to another level. What does matter is that bullying was involved, and the bully was the person that is PAID to EDUCATE this student, not to criticize her belly, not call her names, and not impugn the character of her parents. I have friends and family members that are teachers. They’re overworked. They’re underpaid. They can’t watch everything. It’s hard to remain impartial. I sympathize, and that is why the teaching profession is not for everybody. I really feel that the teaching position is not for Christie Wilt (the name of the teacher), because she is a bully.

Is there anyone reading this that hasn’t had their self-esteem shredded at the hands of a bully? I remember my own terrorist, from fourth and fifth grade. Her name was Jane Fisher. She called me names and made fun of my teeth (this was pre-braces.) She ripped the ribbons out of my hair, threatened to punch me in the nose, and poked a hole in my favorite yellow dress with her pencil. Her mother was my math tutor, so Jane also knew what kind of idiot I was. And she told everybody. I cried every day that I had to go to school. Teachers told me to suck it up. We thankfully moved away right before sixth grade.

When adults do not do what they are supposed to do when they see a bullying situation, they are in the wrong and it can adversely affect children for many years to come. Hell, 20+ years later I remember the teacher that told me to ‘suck it up’ just as much as I remember Jane. When adults do not do the right thing, it only validates the bullying behavior and smashes the self-esteem of the one being bullied. The one being bullied either no longer trusts adults; or, in the case of my daughter, the one being bullied takes matters into her own hands, earning her the nickname “Ali”. And when you are an adult that is doing the bullying, you just need to be plain old eradicated. And that’s exactly what needs to happen to Christie Wilt.

Please sign. Please. Spare her next victim.

This Angers Me.

Many parents, myself included, remember when our children were small, defenseless, and raw. We wanted to shield them from every germ, every possible scrape, and every moral injustice. Many parents of special needs children never forget this fierce protectiveness, because their children will always need them to be their advocate. I saw this item on tonight’s news, the basic text of which is pasted below:

*******************
Girl Says She Was Bullied In Class By Teacher
Monday November 7, 2011
WASHINGTON COURTHOUSE, Ohio – A 14-year-old special needs student claimed that she was the subject of bullying in the classroom from her teachers.

She said her educators made fun of her and had audio tape recordings to prove it, 10 Investigates’ Paul Aker reported.

The girl claimed that she was called lazy and dumb, and an educator made fun of her belly.

Her family hid a tape recorder on the girl because of her complaints. The recording revealed teacher Christy Wilt and former teacher’s aide Kelly Chaffins criticizing the girl.

In a one portion of the tape, Chaffins became upset because the way girl answered a question.

“Are you kidding me?” Chaffins said. “Are you that damn dumb? You are that dumb? Oh my God. You are such a liar.”

“I am not lying,” the student said.

“No wonder you don’t have friends,” Chaffins said. “No wonder nobody likes you.”

On another occasion, Wilt and Chaffins talked to the girl about her body.

“Don’t you want to do something about that belly?” Chaffins asked.

“Yes,” the girl responded.

“Well, evidently you don’t because you don’t do anything at home,” Chaffins said. “You sit at home and watch TV.”

“Ask your mom and dad to go for a walk,” Wilt said.

“On the weekends they’re busy,” the girl said.

“Doing what? Watching TV?” Wilt said.

“Lazy,” Chaffins said.

On another occasion, the teacher told the girl to climb on a treadmill that was placed in the class because she got an answer wrong. The district claimed that the treadmill is not used as punishment but to “refocus” students.

The 14-year-old spent more than 15 minutes on the treadmill. The speed seemed to have steadily increased along with the remarks, Aker reported.

When the treadmill apparently broke, the girl was told to run in place. When her parents called to complain, an audiotape captured Chaffins saying the teen’s parents were “liars raising a liar.”

The district demanded Chaffins’ immediate resignation but not Wilt’s.

“We were shocked and disgusted at what we heard,” said Dan Mordarski, the girl’s attorney. “What’s shocking to me is that there is one teacher that is still employed by the district.”

Wilt declined to comment for the story.

“We were distressed, very upset and angered by what was on those tapes,” said Miami Trace Schools Superintendent Dan Roberts.

Roberts investigated the first complaint. According to an e-mail obtained by 10 Investigates, Roberts found absolutely no truth to it and warned the girl’s family that their concerns were “bordering on slander and harassment.”

“When we found the audio proof, we acted immediately,” Roberts said.

Wilt was not suspended, he said.

“We felt the level of her involvement there did not meet with the level that educational aide had done,” Roberts said.

According to the district, it would go along with the Ohio Department of Education decision on punishment.

The recently-issued ruling states that the teacher is required to take four hours of classes recognizing bullying and another fours to recognize child abuse. If she fails to take the classes or has other incidents of unbecoming conduct, the state can enact a five-year suspension.

10 Investigates was unable to reach Chaffins for comment.

The district recently settled the lawsuit for $300,000, Aker reported.

*******************
I mean I am really, REALLY angry, because when you’re dealing with special needs people you have to have compassion and understanding. You can still be firm, and stern, and authoritative, but you can’t be a bully.

Mrs. Wilt, you have a teacher’s UNION to fight for your rights and your benefits, but there’s no UNION fighting for the kid you were bullying on these tapes. She has something even better: a family that believes in her. Don’t mess with a special needs family. You might think they’re idiots, and that you can pick on an underdog, but there’s often an army behind these people ready to defend them. You won’t know what hit you.

Mrs. Wilt, you haven’t lost your job, YET, but I sincerely hope you do. Readers, please sign this petition if you agree.

Hotter Than a Pistol

I’m Glad You’re Alive.

Many disabilities are not apparent at birth (like autism.) Symptoms present themselves later (like they do with autism), or people just might not be afflicted with them until later in life (not like with autism, or maybe with autism, who really knows?)

Specifically, I am thinking of depression, which is debilitating and terrible and leads to awful things. I spent much of this morning thinking that a friend of mine had killed himself on Halloween. As it turns out, it wasn’t my friend after all, but someone with a similar name and with a similar life trajectory. I am very grateful that I can still talk to my friend, because now I can tell him how concerned I am for him because when I heard the thankfully false news I wasn’t at all surprised. Depression is a selfish and awful disease, and it is so difficult to take the steps to overcome it because its primary side effect is apathy, so you don’t even care about your own downward spiral.

I have battled depression my entire life. I finally overcame it through coping skills that I learned in therapy. As a result, though, for the rest of my life I will have to spend a lot of time in a clinical state of mind, sorting through my emotions and listening to my internal voice and identifying my emotional triggers.

See, here’s the thing about depression: it’s as diverse as the people it affects. There’s no cookie-cutter cure for depression. Even worse, there’s nothing you can really administer to make it go away. There’s no magic pill (although there are certainly a lot of antidepressants out there.) All of the healing has to happen from within, using methods that may only work for you. Of course it always helps to have an excellent support system, but even that can’t erase the monumental task of healing your self-esteem, or your loneliness, or your sorrow.

Universally, the one thing you can’t do when you are depressed is to burrow up and isolate yourself. Positive energy is always moving, when you become depressed and apathetic and stagnant that positive energy passes you by and goes to someone else. So, you have to get moving. Get out there. Take a walk. Take a drive. Call a friend. And, of course, the absolute instant that you feel that the world might be a better place without you in it, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800- 273-8255. They have the resources that can shine a beam of hope into your darkness, so that you can eventually hold your own little hope flashlight.

Happy Hallowmas!

Alyne’s not the biggest Halloween fan. Actually, Alyne and shopping malls have something in common: they both begin promoting Christmas in October. Alyne believes that Halloween is just a stepping stone in the path to Christmas festivities. See, in Alyne’s mind (as far as I can tell, I don’t really know what goes on in her head, which is why I make half this stuff up), you endure Halloween, then you deal with Thanksgiving, which, according to Alyne, is kind of a non-event, unless there’s company in from out of town. Then there’s the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then there’s Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is awesome because Alyne eats guacamole and spinach dip, and parties with family, and gets to curl her hair and wear pantyhose. She also gets to open exactly one present, which had better be a damn Arch Card or she will command that the fiery pits of hell open up and swallow you whole.

But, back to Halloween.

Alyne does enjoy the Halloween party at her work, where they have a costume contest. She’s won the contest with the same black cat costume for three years straight, which is bizarre because for about 1,000 consecutive Halloweens she was the Evil Queen from Snow White and she never won anything with that costume, which is fairly elaborate. Conversely, the black cat costume is pretty much just a headband with ears and drawn-on whiskers and a fuzzy sweater, which shows that in real life, like in fairy tales, the simple and pure win at the end while the Evil Queen gets nothing.

Alyne doesn’t go trick-or treating anymore. She used to trick-or-treat around the cul-de-sac until about 5 years ago, and when we were younger there would be huge neighborhood block parties, but we finally got it through our thick skulls that she doesn’t even like candy, and so dragging a 30-year-old around the neighborhood for candy was just unnecessary; I mean, if we wanted candy we could just drive to the grocery store (or turn off the lights and blow out he jack-o-lantern and pretend that nobody was home during trick-or-treat hours as we sat in the dark feasting on the candy that we bought for the neighborhood kids).

Nowadays, Alyne helps hand out candy to the neighborhood kids, and by “helps” I mean that she stays in her room and watches “The Parent Trap” on her private television set and gets irate every time the dog barks at the doorbell. Then she pulls out her videos of “Home Alone”, “Elf”, and “A Christmas Story” and, poof, the Christmas season has begun!

There’s an “I” in “Ignorance”

I rail against the use of the R-word (RETARDED) all of the time. I’ve done it here, here, and here on this blog alone, but I’ve been against the use of that word for as long as I can remember. When I was in high school, I wrote an article for the school newspaper detailing why I hated that word and why you shouldn’t say it, and gave a little bit of my own background in my attempt to form a persuasive argument. However, there is one thing I learned in my 11 years at Catholic high school, and that is that Catholic girls are mean, so from the moment of publication, every time I entered a classroom, gym, or cafeteria at good old Bishop Watterson High School, a certain group of girls whose faces I will never forget screamed “retard” and giggled as the sun glinted off their braces and 80s hairspray. I think, even back then, I didn’t care what anyone thought about me, but it broke my heart when I thought of Alyne, because those girls were making fun of my sister, who couldn’t stand up for herself and would never be able to do so.

Most of us that hate that word happen to love someone who suffers from some sort of affliction associated with that word. When I say something to someone who uses that word, I inevitably hear the following:
• “There’s nothing wrong with that word. It is just part of American vocabulary nowadays” (no, it really isn’t, neither is “faggot” or “spic” or “nigger”)
• “I have a cousin/sister-in-law/uncle that is retarded, so I can say what I want” (really, no, you can’t. I dare you to say it in front of their mothers, your ears will catch on fire before they’re done screaming at you)
• “Lighten up! It is just a word” (no, it isn’t, you’re using it as a slur, and once it becomes a slur it is full of hurt.)

I hear that word everywhere I go. I’ve heard it from my best friend, my former boss, my daughter’s friends, those friends’ parents. I’ve heard my daughter say it. More often than anything, I hear it at work, where I’m surrounded by kids in their early twenties, who are full of hope and promise and grain alcohol. They don’t mean to be cruel, I’m sure, but each of these people becomes defensive when you say something to them regarding the use of the word (see above.) Look. It’s offensive. Stop it.

I’ve been thinking about the Catholic school incident (which wasn’t really an incident, as it went on for two years so it became more of a lifestyle) lately because of Facebook. Although I’m not Facebook friends with any of those girls, I am friends with people who are, and they show up from time to time in my “people you may know” feed. They have profile photos posted of their healthy, happy children, their husbands, and their nice new homes, and really, good for them. I hope they realize how lucky they are to have those healthy, “normal” children, but they probably don’t. Those photos all kind of blend into each other, rendering the whole thing as characterless as a group of mean teenage girls could ever be, even all grown up (hey, I have to get a petty jab in somewhere. I deserve it, and so does Alyne.)

I’ll leave you with some statistics: 1 in 40 children are diagnosed with some form of autism in the United States. 1 in 730 are diagnosed with Down Syndrome. Other forms of MR/DD include Prader-Willi Syndrome, Phenylkketonuria, Cretinism, Microcephaly, Hydrocephalus, from which 1 in 1000 suffer from some form of these. 1 in 1000 children also suffers from an MR/DD affliction that can’t be diagnosed.

Although I’m no good at math, my point with these numbers is that mental retardation is more common than you think, and every time you utter the word “retarded” you are, more likely than not, going to say it in front of someone who is going to be offended, so don’t get all pissy when they tell you to knock it off.