Susie’s Big Secret
Last night on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope Susie Maroney revealed a dreadful secret, a secret so hideously gigantic that it threatened to destroy her entire life. What is this secret? When Susie was born she was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, luckily for her and her twin it was a very mild case and through the hard work of her mother and family was able to overcome it. She overcame it so well that she was able to keep it a secret from her friends and later on the world.
Keeping something like this secret is rather silly in my opinion. I know from personal experience – I tried to keep my muscular dystrophy a secret for years. When I finally came clean 5 years ago, my friends were shocked and surprised they never even realized I was in a wheelchair before, and they never thought to ask what was wrong with me. In all seriousness it is silly.
Some families have a real cone of silence when it comes to disabilities – parents can have a real problem accepting that their children are anything less than perfect. This can go as far as actually lying to family and friends, on in extreme cases shutting their disabled children off from society entirely. Families do this in the mistaken belief that society will think less of them because they have disabled children. Maybe this is a hold over from the karmic view of disability – that the parents must have done something to deserve their disabled children.
The fact is that the vast majority of people do not have a problem with disabled people. In some cases disabled people are treated differently some able-bodied people feel guilty when they see disabled people. When I was much younger and much cuter well meaning people would come up to me in the street and hand me $20.00 just like that. This happened on more than one occasion one time it was as much as $50.00. Every time I would try to give it back but they would refuse to accept. I believe they did this out of miss placed sense of guilt maybe in the fact that they weren’t disabled or they felt they had never given back to society. All of these people felt sorry for me, but I also felt sorry for them.
The fact is that disabled people are ordinary everyday people. Anyone could be disabled; you could be hit by a bus tomorrow. Next time you see someone in a wheelchair think, “That could be me!†If you were disabled would you want people to feel sorry for you? Would you want people to treat you differently?
When Susie Maroney revealed to her husband that she was born with Cerebral Palsy he didn’t care at all – she is a person not a disability.
August 7th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
If a person’s “disability” is so mild that her husband was not aware of it, it suggests that as a practical matter she wasn’t disabled.
The term disabled would convey clear meaning to the listener and the reader if its use was confined to those person whose daily life is significantly impacted by it.
August 8th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
In her case, yes. Her case is so mild that it’s completely irrelevant to her life.
I was using her case to shine a light on people who try to hide “real” disability.
It wasn’t so long ago that disabled people were locked up in institutions and sent to special schools. Disabled people were never to be seen in public. Sometimes people with incredibly mild disabilities would be institutionalised and given nothing but the most basic education in special schools. Someone with a disability only slightly worse than Susie’s would come out of this severely disadvantaged – their treatment at the hands of authorities giving them a greater disability than they had to start with.
My mother at one stage was told that my brother and I would need to go to a special school. She had to fight to keep us at a mainstream school.
It is rare now but ignorance can still negatively effect the lives of disabled people. I just hope that I can do something to educate the few people who are still ignorant of disabilities.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Chris-
Yes, you make a good point.
In some schools they have “tracking.” Supposedly that means students are assigned to different classes based on ability. So, if a school has 120 students taking 10th grade English and the school management decides to offer four sections, then the 30 smartest students are put in the top class, the next 30 in the second to the top, and so on.
However, I think the school management may presume the handicapped to be less intelligent and assign them to the slower class.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
i am a great friend of chris n his brother nick i have none them both for a few years now…….. i have 2 children with disablities one at special school the other will be going to a mainstream school next year… I have never had a problem with their disablitiy it is a challenge yes…….. ashamed or feel guilty NO!!!! If ever i feel down i just thing of the great folks i have made becausee of my sons beening the way they are… And yes chris i have made heaps of typos so sue me lol