"Will you be sitting with Rosa?"
For a moment my mind's a blank. Then I realize she means the special needs girl who sits at the back of the classroom.
The girl in the motorized wheelchair.
The girl who rarely talks and, when she does, is very hard to understand.
I didn't even know her name was Rosa.
"There's plenty of room at that table," Ms. Rucker says without looking over her shoulder.
Inside, I panic.
Yes, I'm missing a leg, but the rest of me is...well, it's normal.
Do people think I'm special-needs now?
Is that how they see me?
No! They can't!
But...but if I start sitting with special-needs kids, that is what people will think.
It just is.
Ms. Rucker turns and gives me a cool, blank look.
She wants an answer.
My mind is a flurry of contradictions. I want to lie and say I'm nearsighted. That I need to be up front in my own chair. That I hope just fine.
But I also think about my terror in returning to school. Feeling like a freak.
Is that how Rosa feels?
The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen
I have not lost my leg in a car accident, as did Jessica in The Running Dream. No, my cerebral palsy, and my aging body leave me at a crossroads. Jessica, a teenager, met her new body. She did not like what she saw. She wanted to run from her wheelchair.
A childhood friend recommended
The Running Dream to me. Only recently have we re-established contact.
Jessica brought to mind two individuals, at two very different points in my life. Laura Johnson. Jean Wassenaar.
Laura Johnson was a junior high school classmate. I was affected mildly by my cerebral palsy. I walked with a slight limp, and my right hand was bent at my wrist. Some, not all, of my peers made fun of me for my physical appearance. I yearned to be seen as normal. Laura was part of the SLBP [Slow-Learning Behavior Problem Program.] She was very friendly--overly so for my
normal-seeking teenage being. I wanted nothing to do with Laura.
Ironically, for as much as I yearned for a distinct identity from Laura, my salvation--advanced-level classes--was my nemesis in my search for peer acceptance. Being placed in advanced classes earned me the moniker,
brain.
Jean Wassenaar. I am haunted by how I treated Jean. She was a colleague I knew for five to ten years. Only in her obituary did I learn that Jean was a polio survivor, who learned to walk again at the age of 13. By the time I met Jean, she used a cane to walk. During the last two to three years that I knew her, Jean used a scooter. She was a very outgoing person, who had a wonderful laugh. We had a good working relationship. Yet, I remember once, if not more than times, when we were headed downstairs. She needed to use the elevator. I could not deal with her use of a scooter. So, I opted to take the stairs, and meet her downstairs. She never confronted me about it. In fact, when I left work due to my failing body, she extended herself to me in a note saying that if she could help in any way to let her know. She was beaten to death by her husband--an act rooted in mental illness.
With Laura Johnson, I well may not have been buddy-buddy with her. We had different interests. It is not that I
should have sought out her friendship
just because she was labeled SLBP. To have done so would have been just as bad as shunning her on the basis of what she represented to me.
With Jean Wassenaar, I believe we may have had a deeper relationship had I been more accepting of the device she used to live fully.
