For those of you who believe we don’t live in a world where people with disabilities are discriminated against; from a post on the Life of Jason blog regarding a trip to a local restaurant, a woman at the next table says loud enough for everyone to hear;
“If I had a retard for a kid I’d never let it out of the house.”
I’m glad my dad didn’t hear it because he would have come over the table at that woman. As the situation was, it took everything within me to not make a scene. My first instinct was to turn around and rip into this woman but I thank God He’s really worked on me in that area! I just instead kissed Eli on the forehead and tried to keep him as quiet as possible. Some food finally showed up and we gave to Eli just to keep him happy.
You would think this would be the end of the story but there was more. A few minutes after her initial comment, the waiter handling the table of this family came over and asked if everything was OK.
“Except for the retard at the next table bothering us things are fine,” the woman said to him.
“I’m sorry you have to deal with that,” the waiter said. “Can I do anything to fix that for you?”
Read the entire post:
http://lifeofjason.com/2007/08/26/if-i-had-a-retard-for-a-kid/
THANK YOU Jason, for writing about your experience because only in sharing these incidents so others see the harm it causes can we ever hope to make a difference.
Once while in a Walmart our youngest daughter came running up to us in tears. After a few minutes of trying to figure out what had happened she finally told us that she had overheard two men walking by look at our oldest daughter with multiple disabilities, who had been walking with us out of hearing range, and say, “I don’t know why they let people like that live.”
“Why did they say that, mom?” she asked crying.
The answer to “Why” is the reason for this site.
Thank you for linking to the story. I still feel the hurt when I think about this situation. It’s very hard sometimes not to respond in kind when faced with people displaying this kind of intolerance toward those who are disabled.