My accidental attribution, however, may have been serendipitous (no pun on your blog’s name intended). Having discovered that you are a fellow Rochester-area artist, I now have an opportunity to promote your work. (Although given the wide gap between our artistic sensibilities, who knows? You might bristle at the idea of us being “fellow artists.” ) With your permission I would like to add you to my blogroll.

On to the topic at hand: I thank you for your thoughtful and well-articulated response. My post was written in “primary colors” whereas your reply filled in some of the more subtle shadings I may have neglected. You have given me much to consider, and I am grateful.

I hope you’ll consider coming back. This blog is dedicated to free expression for all. The more points-of-view expressed here, the better.

However, I have been fortunate enough to be involved with people of differing abilities throughout my lifetime. Most of my family worked at a camp for children with disabilities and I went there every summer from the time I was five on. And while I agree that the best possible thing you can do for anyone, regardless of their ability, is to treat them the same way you would treat anyone else, and that a consistent feeling condescension is one of the most damaging things that can happen to anyone, the point of this particular story was that these other boys who really did want to win, that all these people involved and invested in this concept of winning, put this ambition aside because they decided that this boy’s happiness was more important to them at that moment. It also suggests that this interaction, that this moment, and the feeling that was shared by these people in this moment perhaps prompted them to continue to examine their values throughout their lives and make similar choices in the future.

With this particular situation, in the story that is set up, whether it is true or not, Shay would never have had the ability to make a home run if the other team had allowed him to play but not thrown him easy pitches and let the ball go when they could have struck him out. It would have been beyond his abilities even if he had tried every day of his life. And because of this fact, I think the decision they made was the right one.

Because I have seen the look on children’s faces when we have found ways to make it so they could do anything at the camp we worked at that they could do at any other camp, even if that meant we grabbed them out of their wheelchairs and ran them around the bases ourselves while the other team good-naturedly fumbled the ball a bit or if it meant parts of the play had nothing to do with the script or were unintelligible to everyone but the other actors who’d actually seen the script.

There is a balance that can be found between recognizing each others’ limitations and deciding that people are more important than following all the rules or winning or getting done quickly or cleanly or whatever our motivation may be. The camp I worked at was set up so that kids who could not go to other camps, kids who had too many special needs, who needed one-on-one supervision and assistance 24/7, who had trakes or catheters or limited mobility, or who such severe delays that they really could not keep up with other kids had somewhere to go where they could be just like any other kid. And the focus was on making it a regular camping experience.

It is rugged, there are dirt road full of rocks and potholes, there are ravines and a waterfront you have to hike a mile down to get to, there are basic boy scout tents out in the middle of the wilderness, and there are all the camp things you get anywhere else: bon-fires and talent shows, camp songs and obstacle courses, archery and rifle range, canoeing and hiking … but there are also several nurses on duty and swings to get kids with limited mobility in the pool and shower chairs in the showers and ramps to get into all the buildings because these things are necessary tools and the kids know this, we all know this. I guess in a way I feel like we can’t expect Shay to make a home-run without assistance anymore than we can expect someone in a wheelchair to be able to get in a building by themselves without a ramp. And I guess, in the end, I feel it is that bliss he felt, that bliss he shared that was the important part of this story.

I think the crux of why I passed this story on was the point the father made when he said, “I believe, that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.”

Life is full of balances and no one value or decision of what is right and wrong can be applied to every situation without taking the facts into account, without recognizing the reality of our own and other’s lives and the limitations we all have to work with, some of which can be overcome and some of which cannot not matter how hard one may try, no matter how hard one may wish for it to be different.

I know I have learned some of the most important lessons in my life from people who have been classified as disabled. Lessons I might not have learned had I not seen people with disabilities as being as wise and able and deserving of respect and attention as any other individual. I know I have been frustrated by, and felt the frustration of friend who have been treated as inferior, as stupid, as incapable and unworthy based on people’s assumptions about their disabilities or due to people’s impatience with taking the time to understand those who are not always easiest to understand. And I know how important it has been to so many people to find a place where they are treated as equals, where they are expected to try just as hard as anybody else, but where they are also accepted and appreciated as being enough exactly as they are.

It is a difficult balance we speak of here, but so much of our life is. All we can do is our best again and again. And our best changes based on any number of circumstances. Our best is not the same when we are young as when we’re old, or when we’re healthy compared to when we’re sick, or whether we are able-bodied or disabled in some way … and I think we need to understand this about ourselves and about others. And anything that reminds us that people are more important than anything else (winning, profit, money, success, whatever) is something I’m willing to pass on.

Now, I always felt pretty cool after I taught the kids, but these kids, MAN, I felt like maybe I made a difference with some of them. I didn’t speak to them any differently, when they did something wrong, I didn’t yell, I just showed them how to do it right. I just treated them like kids. Not special kids. Just kids.