Musing...

     I had to watch a video for a job that I'm applying for today. It was called, "The Ten Commandments". In it, there were people with disabilities talking about how they would like to be treated. They want to be treated just like everyone else and only have the barest minimum of concessions to make it just as easy on them to do things as it is for the rest of us.
     The very need for such a video made me start thinking about how ridiculously immature the population that I have come in contact with is. Bigots, racists, people who can only see  people as their stereotypes, and people that have their heads too far up their asses to notice that there is an actual human being standing in front of them make me sick. Then again, I was raised to see people as individuals, not as anyone or anything else. Something that someone else did shouldn't shape my impression of you. For instance, a good friend of mine whom I love with all of my heart has a mother that I cannot see eye to eye with. Her mother has done a few slightly unprofessional things that caused me a problem or two, but I still love that hateful woman's daughter like she is my sister. I just refrain from allowing her mother to come up in the conversation. (Art, it's not your mom. No worries. :) She's always been very sweet to me. <3 )
     As far as shattering stereotypes go, let me share a few with you. I was working a nonprofit event in Shreveport. There are pictures on my facebook of the event and you may be able to see the man that I'm talking about. He's a tall man with broad shoulders and a greying beard. I have yet to see him out of a leather vest with a huge fist emblazoned on the back. The day that I'm describing, he also had on a pair of mirrored sunglasses and a bandanna on his head. I hadn't had a chance to meet him yet, but I had a few minutes of down time so I  was people watching. I saw a little boy running around and smiled. He was precious and couldn't have been more than four years old, if that. I can't remember whether the big biker stopped him or if the child stopped to tie his shoes and that's when the biker approached. Either way, I saw the child look up at him, almost bending backwards to look up at the face above him. I heard the biker say something; I couldn't hear words but I could hear a kind smile in his tone. Then I saw all 6+ feet of him kneel before the child and tie his shoe for him. The kid smiled at him broadly and thanked him. I got formally introduced to the man a few minutes later. The name on his jacket was 'Opie'. I have yet to meet a man that is as kindhearted as he is. We're even facebook friends now due to the organizations that we're in (I'm a part of the Justice for Justin Bloxom Alliance for Innocence and Opie is one of the Bikers Against Child Abuse) and their collaboration on certain events in the Shreveport area. There is one shattered stereotype for you. A kindhearted biker.
     The next stereotype that I'd like to share with you is the guy that I saw in the student center. He had a flat brimmed cap on sideways, beads in his hair, a ripped shirt with some sort of basketball propaganda on it, a tattoo in darker ink on his dark arm proclaiming what part of Dallas he was from. His shoes were untied and had large 'tongues' that hung out at an odd angle, his basketball shorts were about three sizes too big and the black silky material contrasted sharply with his green boxers. Again, I was people-watching, so my eyes followed him to the piano that we had in the student center. He sat down and I just guessed that it was time for me to find my headphones because he was going to start fooling around on the keys like a five year old (or any other non-piano playing college student for that matter). As I rifled through my purse, I heard the most beautiful melody breeze through the student center. My head snapped up and there he was, playing a complex and melancholy song without a single scrap of sheet music. I am a little ashamed to say that my jaw actually dropped, giving me that pet goldfish look. I recovered fairly quickly and just listened, dumbfounded, as he played the most beautiful music I had ever heard. Shattered stereotype two: A classically talented 'gangsta'.
     But I started this long, rambling blog by talking about the disabilities video. I am familiar mostly with physical disabilities (my mother's back is two-thirds fubar'd, my sister has a chronic stomach condition, my father was infected with West Nile and still has partial paralysis, my very best friend has Cerebral Palsy, a good friend of my mother's is confined to a wheelchair... the list goes on and on.) but I do know a handful of people with mental disabilities or mental illnesses. I won't go into that right now, but I will go into how I've seen people treat them. All of them. My sister is commonly treated like a hypochondriac, and as a result, some people have thought that my mother has Munchhausen's. All that she wants is to make my sister better. Besides, we eat the same food and such, so I'd be sick too if she was doing something like that. No one really knows how bad my mom's back really is unless they've seen her at home. For the sake of her pride, I won't go into that either... Whitney gets treated like a spoiled little rich girl or a circus sideshow when she rides her Segway around campus. What they don't know is that she has the Segway instead of a wheelchair. She didn't buy any kind of special privileges, she made concessions so that she could get around campus just like the rest of us. The epic coolness of the Segway is collateral damage. The family friend with the wheelchair is more of a badass than I could ever hope to aspire to. He can not only jump a curb in his wheelchair, he's also a blackbelt and trains MMA fighters.
     I spent more time writing this than I had originally meant to, so I'll get to the bit about life in the next blog. Time to go to lunch with a friend!