Lawrence and Tyler at moon

Lawrence and Tyler at moon, originally uploaded by ralphhogaboom.

This is my first try at time-elapsed photography. The sky was shot at about 8:30 pm. The buildings were shot almost an hour later.

Big Easter Weekend

I thought I told you to S T O P, originally uploaded by ralphhogaboom.

For those of you who don’t know, I work at a non-profit that gets jobs for disabled people. Physical and mental. We might find some jobs, but we make a lot more. We have contracts with the military to do vehicle maintenance, fleet management, sani-cans, grounds work, issuing, janitorial, those are the major ones. Most of those workers are disabled in some way. And most of these contracts were taken over from companies that were not non-profit, did not hire disabled people, and had much lower levels of customer service.

I’m very proud of the company I work for.

I never thought of myself as having problems being around mentally retarded people, and I still don’t. But I can now realize that I wasn’t, and often am not, comfortable.

When I first started working here, there was the Jump Rope room. The Jump Rope room is full of mentally retarded employees. Some are severely mentally retarded. Most are very excited when people come through. I had to go through that to get to the server room.

At first, I avoided it. Then, a few weeks later, I started parking in back so that I would go through the room. When my family visited me (which is often, it’s a family-friendly place) I’d have us enter, and leave, through the Jump Rope room.

I got to know several of them. What’s interesting, to me anyway, is the number of times someone says “They’re like children.” The first part, they, establishes a comfortable distance. The second part implies sympathy.

The analogy works only to a certain degree. I’ll give you a case where the analogy diverges.

Our CEO, who started this company with many of the jump rope employees, had a birthday party recently. All of the folks from jump rope decided to make him a birthday card, and one card had Greg sign it. Greg signed his name with GERGEERG. It was really sweet, when it was explained “He’s been learning how to write.”

This is where the analogy breaks. Greg’s learning how to write is sweet, by in a painful way. When my daughter tries to write her name, it’s sweet in a potential way. She will be able to write her name. At first, she’ll falter. Then she’ll get better and better until she takes her place as someone who is literate. Greg’s improvements have been on behalf of some hard work. I don’t think Greg will ever write the way you or I do, and that’s sad. That’s limiting. That’s where the phrase “They’re like children” falls flat, because of the potential. But it’s a comforting thing for people to say, so they say it anyway.

There’s also a perception of ‘not quite a person’. Or ’shadow of a person’. That’s a more bitter analogy, that mentally retarded people are missing something, some part of them or their mind. And while it might seem more accurate, it’s also most insulting.

What is, is. Who people are, they are.

This is easier, in a sense, for me since I’m exposed to people with radically different mental stats on a daily basis.

It’s easy to do with words, but not so easy mentally. To accept that Greg is all that he is, he is who he is and he’s every bit a full person, was not easy. I do think I’ve done it, though. That doesn’t mean I’m comfortable, and I don’t think it needs to.

Here’s your homework. You know that woman that works at Safeway, the mentally retarded woman, who bags groceries? When have you ever said “How’s your day?” Ask her, and listen to her answer. Don’t couch your words. This is something I’m working on, too.

Haggling

I’m trying to sell our ‘88 Honda Civic hatchback with 219,000 miles to the guy that works at the video store.

Me: “I want to return these two movies.”
Him: “Okay.”
Me: “Also, I found my keys finally so I can turn that car on now.”
Him: “Oh, did you bring it or something?”
Me: “Yeah.”

Him: “Here? Now?”

Me: “Yeah, you wanna go look?”

(He sprints out of the store, out to the parking lot. I have just enough time to turn it on and have the CD player kick in before he goes back inside the store. When I finally catch up with him …)

Me: “So what do you think?”
Him: “How much you asking for it?”
Me: “$200.”
Him: “I’ll give you $185.”

Me: “Okay.”

Him: “Um …. ”
Me: “What was that, haggling?”
Him: “I thought that’s what we were supposed to do … ”
Me: “Yeah, I guess. I’ve never really done that before … ”
Him: “Me neither. Oh well.”