Many years ago, when I was dating a girl whom I loved dearly (and still do), she frequently told me that I was "Special". Oversensitive me heard that as an insult. I didn't want to be special; I wanted to be great. Special felt like I was being placed in a category outside normal, with special considerations or allowances, like that of competing in the Special Olympics. Special felt retarded. I took it as well as I could, and we joked about it, but there was some sting. I was really taking it wrong, and not how intended. On the level I knew that, but why was being called 'Special' taken by me as a slur, when it was meant as an endearment? This caused me to think about my weird bias against the word special.
I know many people are offended by the word "Retard". It's terribly un-PC to use it. I'm cool with it. I think it's a perfectly good word. If you think labeling someone retarded (or special) devalues them, maybe you're the one who just doesn't get it. Maybe you secretly devalue them, or misconstrue the word, and this stings. Like I said, a lot of people these days see the term "retard" as one of those off-limit words. I don't. I think it's a perfectly apt descriptor.
If you consider the meaning, it just means slow, or slowed down, or behind the curve. Any other word used to replace it still suffers from needing to provide a description of the condition, or it becomes somewhat abstruse. For example, consider the following words from the Global Down Syndrome Foundation:
This makes me wonder why they don't take it another step further and call it Up Syndrome. Take a minute and compare the words they chose to use with the 1st definition of retarded. There is little difference. Even differently-abled admits a lack of normal ability. The avoidance of admitting disability so hard smacks of desperation and a heavy bias against admitting such. It shows that we are not okay with disability, and THAT is a prejudice all of its own.
Slower is not by definition lesser, that's just the spin we've put on it in a quick paced world where everyone is trying to beat each other. This drive to excel is wonderfully encapsulated in the song Harder, Better, Stronger, Faster, by Daft Punk. Note that both words of their name, used independently or combined, could be considered a slur. But they own it, and it's cool.
In this sense, maybe the retards are those trying too hard to be cool, running too fast, and suffering a lot of spills, accidents, and head wounds (offenses), people who cannot own up to their shortcomings. If so, these insults and accidents indicate that they haven't given "retard" its due respect. People often pretend to more intelligence or ability than they actually possess. I think it's admirable when someone admits they don't know, fall short, or were wrong. Sometimes I think we'd benefit greatly if we could just learn to "Slow the frac down!, and shut the frac up!". If that offends you too, it's a play on the word fracas FFS! (For Fun Sakes, although the other F is fine too, as it's also fun). All this fracas of offense and telling people what they can or cannot say only adds to the fracas.
Consider the lyrics of another song:
Depeche Mode - "Slow"
Slow, slow
Slow as you can go
So I can feel all I want to know
Slow, slow
I go with your flow
Let the world keep its carnival pace
I'd prefer to look into your beautiful face
what a waste (wide awake, what a waste = to ignore beauty)
As the stars continue to fly by
I don't have one desire to understand why
I don't try (don't worry about shortcomings or inabilities)
Slow, slow
Slow as you can go
I want my senses to overflow
Slow, slow
and doesn't it show
I don't need a race in my bed (insomnia - worries about the world)
When speed's in my heart and speed's in my head
Instead
It's tempting for fools to rush in
When something's so good why should we rush and fail?
It's a sin
Slow, slow
Slow as you can go
That's how I like it
I like it
We're all retarded (or specially gifted, differently abled) in some way or another. When we rush to avoid that we fail. Many shortcomings cannot be overcome. We all fall short too in grasping reality, and in our ultimate understanding. If there is a god, I'm sure I look a lot like a retard respectively. As a retard, the best thing I've learned is to be OK with my retardation. There's a lot of stamina in slow. It's okay to be less than best. Taking it slow is sometimes the best way to go... just ask our average Goldilocks Sun. It's just the right size to produce a slow regulated burn. It burns slowly enough to give time enough for life to evolve and grow. It will live a very long and productive life (10 Billion Years! or so).
One of my happiest of thoughts is that there is a vast expanse of things I don't know. Ignorance may be bliss, but it's also blissful to realize your ignorance ... especially when realizing that the realization of ignorance is such easy medicine to swallow ... kind of a sweet cherry syrupy taste, or sometimes grape.
Knowing stuff is a burden best borne by the brash, and best hefted with calloused hands and hardened hearts. Everything has its place. Knowledge has its price, and first place is not always given to the swift or smartest. Consider that wily slow Tortoise, and that swift overconfident Hare. If you try to see life as a wonderful game you'll enjoy the journey more than the finish line.
I was a late bloomer, looking younger than most of my peers all the way through my teens, 20s, 30s, & 40s. I think my age has finally caught me. I was also late with the onset of bipolar illness, hitting me so very unaware at the ripe old age of 34. Most who have this disorder manifest it in their late teens. I laughingly attribute the late onset in my case being due to the fact that I was so slow and naive that I didn't have enough "smarts" to get all tangled up in the nuance and contradictions of thinking too hard about things. Maybe my former girlfriend was right, maybe I was special.
In grade school I remember playing a game where I experienced serious fail and embarrassment in being slow. I later wrote a poem about this titled Run-Ron-Run. My third grade teacher, the beautiful Mrs. Olsen whom I had a crush on, took her new batch of students out to the playground lawn to play a game of duck duck goose. My misfortune was that once tagged I couldn't catch anyone. My timid nature had kicked in; I was in a new grade at a new school (Carl Sandburg), and I knew very few of my classmates. Non-aggressive in my running (and likely physically impaired too), I couldn't catch anyone, even the the girls, or the fat kids ( I know that's unPC too). I was eventually winded, fell, and passed out on the grass. When I came to, I saw the sweet face of my teacher and the faces of my grinning, sneering classmates all standing around me in a circle. How embarrassing!
Here's the poem:
RUN RON RUN 7-17-98
Run Ron run
You can get it done!
‘Neath the scorching sun
The turtle made to run
Catch them,
Catch them,
Catch them if you can
You the prize to win
Peers giggle and grin
On your trip, your knees to skin
A rotating flip
head to chin to head
lands you from your dizzy trip,
upon your can instead
landing there, and laid out bare
The children circle round to stare
Children in a circle
Standing on the lawn
I feel like Dr. Jerkyl
Over me they taunt or fawn
I wheeze and gasp,
soon out to pass,
lying limp upon the grass.
Laughs, titters, giggles,
taunting wondering eyes
jeer the simple fool
who could not catch the prize.
as laid out on the grass,
in agony he lies
And loving teacher kind,
and not amused at all
redirects mean mocking minds,
marching them back down the hall
But remember the simple story
of the turtle's patient glory
with his slow insightful care,
the first to make it there
And in the end to humble the
The quick and cocky hare
I am the turtle slow but wise,
and in my own time I'll win the prize
Another instance of my being slow, witted and paced: In fourth grade during roll call the teacher asked me where I was yesterday. I told him I was home sick (I really was). He jokingly responded, "Were you home sick or homesick?". Hardy har har - like a deer in the headlights I didn't get it! My cluelessness made him ask that stupid question two or three more times, to which I answered each time the same, before he realized I was a dolt and dropped it. I was embarrassed by all the attention. A classmate, Maryanne, then spoke up and said mockingly, "He wasn't sick! I saw him out playing in his front yard yesterday!". She shot me a snotty look. I ripped her back a mean one and whispered, "I'll get you at recess!". Defiant, she just stuck out her tongue at me. At recess I saw her on the playground and commenced chase. She took off and I ran after her. All the kids were watching so I really had to catch her. She was simply faster than me. She ran all the way across the playground and out to the big lawned field. At some point I couldn't run anymore and stopped exhausted. She turned around and jeered, and I heard off in the distance the sounds of laughter coming from the kids watching - How embarrassing - what a loser!
I've always been a slow eater. When in a hurry I often get hiccups, or a very painful restriction in my gut pipe. In high school I paid for this, since the guys I hung out with would eat their lunches very quickly and then in boredom they would mess around with my tray, teasing, joking, poking and eating my food - all in good fun (for them). Slowness got me in trouble yet again.
Nobody likes to be slow, slow is low, undesirable...or so we know.
If you're a musician you're familiar with the word ritard - it occurs in a piece of music and it means to slow it down. Some of the best moments in music are when this happens. It's downward movement, calming, and beautiful.
So if you're slow (or fast and just need a breather), be okay to just be special; be ritarded. It's all good. Learn to love the little retard in you. You are a little retard(ed), a special little retard. And if you can't love and appreciate that, you can't really love and appreciate yourself fully. And, you will be intolerant, and maybe even denigrating to others you see as beneath you and retarded.
If retard offends you, maybe that says more about you and your expectations of excellence and perfection, or admitting inability, than it does the person or thing being referred to as retarded. I don't want to live in a world were we cannot allow people to have shortcomings. Why must we all feign to fit a mold of the ideal uber-person, when the law of averages says that most of us will be average on most counts, with a few aberrations above if we're lucky, and below if we're not?
Many times it's not the word we use but the spirit and context in which the word is delivered that matters. A rose by any other name would still look and smell like a rose, thorns and all. Differently-abled still looks and smells like retarded to me - and I'm okay with that. I can own that word too ... and maybe even make it cool, even given its trying so hard not to offend anyone. I could even abuse it and turn it into a slur ...but what do I know? I'm insane. But my realization of that caused me to realize that most everyone else is too in some respects and to some degree.
So cheers to my fellow crazy retarded apes who love a fracas - let's hang out and have a laugh at each other. Laughter, at ourselves and others, is the best way to cut some slack from the drive to be perfect and without flaw, and one of the most enjoyable things about being alive when done in good spirits. Being too uptight is a form of retarded too. The real retards I have had the pleasure to know are role models of this kind of loose amusement and joy, devoid of contempt, and full of acceptance. That is their special differently-abled ability we would all do well to acquire.
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