Dept. of Unexpected Effects [Disability]

[marydell]

I knew, adopting transracially, that my family would be conspicuous and strangers would ask me a lot of stuff, and tell me a lot of stuff, ranging from opinions to stories of their cousin who adopted a baby who blah blah blah.  Doubly true when parenting a child with a limb difference or other physical difference, as it turns out.  That's all fine, and not surprising.  And I generally enjoy hearing people's stories, as long as they aren't the kind of stories that haunt me.

One kind of story that haunts me? Is any story in which a child comes to serious harm.  So when someone meets Charlie, (who did not lose his arm but rather never had it), and immediately launches into telling me how a child they know came to lose a limb, I am sympathetic but on the inside I am also very much OMG AAAAH Stop Telling Me I Don't Even Know You.  It's only happened a couple of times so far but I am coming to understand that it will go on happening until Charlie is grown up, and will happen to him even more often than it happens to me  (Once he's grown up I assume we'll mainly hear people's tales of adults losing limbs, which do not haunt me like the child ones do, although of course I feel for those folks quite a bit, too).

Of course it's never people who have actually lost a limb themselves who do this.  They just want to pat him on the head and swap prosthetics and adaptation stories.  I think perhaps NOT asking "what happened?" is the secret disability/disability-allies handshake. 

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Adopted four kids with "special needs." Have soooooo been there.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I can imagine...4 times the drive-by random advice, too, I bet!

[sanguinity]

It's a sad truth that the things that outsiders too often try to do to set you at your ease and make you feel welcome, only underline that you shouldn't be at ease amongst them. :-/

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I feel like these people, because they're kind of freaked out by what happened to the kid, are looking for me to provide some kind of reassurance based on knowing what it's like. I think the problem is that everyone sees through the lens of their own experience, so even if I say "born like that" they are thinking "trauma...must tell about...!"

[sanguinity]

Hm. It seemed parallel to the situation I run into, where people say, "I knew a lesbian once!" It usually feels like they're trying to say, "We have common ground! Even though you're unspeakably weird, we can still bond! Our common ground is that I've met other lesbians!" They want to bond over that -- and yes, they'll push at that topic of conversation, not getting that we really don't want to hear about these lesbians they knew once, and also not getting that they're pretty much guaranteeing that no bonding will ever happen.

"Hey, I knew a kid like yours" (for what is only partial values of "like yours", and inappropriate values of "let's pick an opening topic of conversation and then cling to it despite all cues to the contrary") was reading similarly to me.

But maybe they're happening for different reasons? Or perhaps I'm drawing a false parallel.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Oh, ye gods! What dumbasses. "Really? And what were these lesbians like, that you observed in the wild?"

I think what I've been experiencing would be kind of equivalent to someone saying "I knew a lesbian once...she DIED! I miss her so much!" Like they're suddenly going down a path of mental association that is incorrect, but also traumatic. So my instinct is to try to make them feel better, which is all well and good, but now I'm carrying their traumatic story with me, too.

[sanguinity]

The version that I get is, "...her life is so HARD! She faces DISCRIMINATION! Let me tell you all the bad things that ever happened to her!"

As of yet, it hasn't gone to "...she DIED!" (I have the impression that conversation happens to trans people, though. :-/ )


...but I suspect that I am veering way off topic. Because lord, being the Designated Social Respository for Stories About Children Being Maimed has gotta be a sucky thing. And I in no way wish to pretend that it isn't.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Off-topic is always welcome around here, unless your initials are W.S. :)

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

I swear sometimes people just like to tell parents stories about kids getting hurt. Because we don't worry enough as it is, obviously.

*sigh* I know, sharing information about possible dangers is one of the reasons we evolved language. It's just that sometimes I wish that some people would un-evolve it.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do run into the occasional person who likes to tell awful stories randomly, as if compelled by a force of nature. The worst version I've personally witnessed is a guy telling a pregnant woman his wife's hell-labor-and-birth story. DUDE.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Does that last line mean that asking 'how did you come to (lose a limb, be in a wheelchair, etc)' is a wrong thing to do? Or just randomly telling strangers stories of other horrors?

Because your last line conflates the two, and I have genuinely never been sure if asking was considered appropriate, or just a step above inappropriate staring.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do think it's inappropriate, with a stranger anyway. "Why is your body like that?" is a personal question, and generally not a necessary one for getting to know a person. It's human nature to be curious about anyone different, but it kind of sucks to be on the receiving end of that curiosity, so I think it's best not to indulge it. With a friend I think it's different, since sharing stories is part of friendship.

ETA: speaking just for my not-disabled self, here, but schooled by my visibly-disabled sister, who hates inquiries more than the average, I think.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I realised later that the way i phrased that was also practically asking you to be a spokesperson for a whole group of which you aren't directly a part; please blame it on clueless not nasty.

(I've got a book with a scene where a girl who thinks a guy is cute does inquire why he's in a wheelchair on their first meeting, but there's mutual anticipation of future friendship. And I've been wondering ever since if the girl, who is portrayed everywhere else as being unusually socially adept and alert to cues, was making a Clueless Able-bodied Mistake. In the real world, I default to not asking questions I'm not sure are appropriate.)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

:) I didn't think you were making me a spokesperson; I just wanted to clarify that I'm not making myself one either.

The girl in your book may be making a clueless mistake, but being socially adept isn't necessarily a protection against that, since various clueless behaviors are also socially normal. And if your guy character wants to talk about it--as I'm sure plenty of people do--she would be picking up on that.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about what people think and what they say or don't say of those thoughts.

For instance -- if I see someone without a limb I do wonder how that came to be, if they lost it, if they never had it; I think in stories, and wonder what the story was that led to what currently is, for whatever I see. I hope to any and all applicable deities that I'm never impaired enough to ask anyone such a question, and I certainly won't let myself while I have any control over myself. I can wonder inside my head all I want but it would be rude and unfair to impose that curiosity on someone else by word or gesture. (As in, I know Charlie was born without a left hand because you've told us, but I certainly wouldn't've asked you to volunteer that info. Or him, when he's older.)

I wonder if I think this in part from being on the other side of it, from dealing with people who look at me and, having been reminded of something or other, feel the need to tell me, such as the parent at the school where I work who reminisced to me about how her brother's curly hair looked like pubic hair in the bathroom sink while I had to grit my teeth and smile.

I'm not psychic but I wonder how many of the people telling you dreadful stories see Charlie, are reminded of Little Billy's Adventure in Injury, and then can't keep that thought in the back of their damn heads where it should stay, but instead relate it to you as if because the connection exists in their head it existed in the outside world let alone in your head. And I wonder how to describe this process more concisely than I have here, to explain why just because one is reminded of something by someone, one doesn't necessarily have to tell them about that thing.

(I also wonder why I can never write a comment without editing it. This may sound more analytical and less sympathetic than I intend it to, but it's all coming from thoughts of "AUGH THAT SOUNDS HORRIBLE. WHY do people DO that?")

[marydell.livejournal.com]

LOL, I love your comments and I love your thinky thinky brain! And jeez, "pubic hair" lady needs to be given the chilly stare of doom for many distinct reasons.

I think you're exactly right about people saying stuff that should stay in their brain. I have to work very hard not to do it myself. I'm always curious when I see someone with a partial limb, or who uses a wheelchair, but I try to remind myself that they're probably curious about why I'm so fat and how anyone my age manages to have zits, but they aren't asking me.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Eeek, don't tell me! :) I'm going to sorta-screen your comment so nobody stumbles on it and freaks out, but don't take it personally--I'm really glad to meet you and you're very welcome here!

And we live in the Chicago suburbs...are you in Canada?

[queen-nala.livejournal.com]

SORRY! I feel like an idiot for writing that :/

Yep, we're in Toronto, Ontario

[marydell.livejournal.com]

LOL, don't worry about it!

I went to Toronto when I was a teen...I was amazed to be able to be out & about (with parents and friends) at 1 in the morning and nobody thought anything about it. It seems like a really cool city.

[queen-nala.livejournal.com]

I still feel dumb. I fail at day 1 of new LJ friend. LMAO

Just delete it. Its ok!

Ya, i grew up in a really small town up north but have lived here since I was 19. We live east of Toronto, so not really in the city. more of the ghetto. lol I'm not a city girl and I would love to move to a smaller town. Too much crime!

[marydell.livejournal.com]

[I've screened the above comment from queen_nala, another Mom of a limb-reduced kiddo, because it has some details of an injury and I don't have the ability to change the font to white so nobody accidentally reads it and gets triggered. Here's the rest of the comment:]

UGh. Someone did that to me once, telling me about [redacted]

Sorry to even tell you that. But ya...

I was in shock, wondering why she was telling me this horrible story.

Where do you guys live?