GROWING UP WASN'T EASY..........

Growing up with cerebral palsy was anything but easy.  I had to worked so much harder just to do the little things that a “normal” child does really easy, i.e. grab things, speak, play games, even when I ate it was a challenge.  Before I could speak, I would talk with my eyes because I knew where everything was.  As I said in my last blog, I had an incredible family who didn’t treat me any different.  If I couldn’t do something, they would modify it or they wouldn’t do it.  If a place wasn’t accessible, we wouldn’t go because they thought if I couldn’t go, they wouldn’t go.  We would always play games.  One time we were playing tee ball and my uncle was holding me up and the ball came to us.  Well he forgot that he had me and when the ball was coming towards us, he reacted by dropping me to catch the ball!  We got the out to win the game! We laughed so hard!

Don’t think that I never was punished because I had a disability, because that’s far from the truth.  If I acted up, I was punished like everybody else.  There was no disability sympathy from my family.  I had many of time outs.  Once I knew I couldn’t the play the disability card, I stopped trying because it would only make it worse.  I had chores,  my mom didn’t care how they got done or how long it took me, just as long as I did it. 

Unfortunately, the real world wasn’t anything like my family.  When I went somewhere people would stare at me and make comments about me and my family.  I didn’t understand why people were staring at me, I was l embarrassed and  I didn’t know what to think. Whenever I played with kids in my neighborhood I was always picked last because of my disability.  Sometimes I would just avoid the other kids just because I knew what was coming. I didn’t have any real friends until I got to high school.

  School had its ups and downs.   I went to a special school for elementary school and middle.  My elementary school was the best they treated us like “normal” typical students.  They wanted us to be as independent as we could be.  I had a walker that they would put me in every morning so I could go wherever I wanted. I would run errands for teachers. I loved all my teachers because they made learning fun. They taught me how to try stuff no matter how hard it was. I owe a lot of credit to them.

Middle school was a whole different story for the first time I was in regular classes as I should have been. However, I was picked on every day by other students. After a while it got to be where I didn’t want to go to school because I didn’t fit in at all.  I missed a lot of days and for this reason I started getting bad grades and that was a wake up call. I finally realized that I needed to go if I ever wanted to get past middle school and into high school.

For high school I wanted to go to my home school that was ten minutes away.  The school system wanted to send me to a school that would have me on the bus for an hour. I was tired of that. My mom fought to get me into Laurel High School, I was the first student in a wheelchair there. After we fought like hell they took me. This was one of the best moves of my life. The first day I had people walking up to me and talking to me. This was where I met my first real friend. I had an aide that helped me with everything that I needed. I was picked on very little but when I was picked on somebody always had my back. I even went to the prom with my best friend.

On my last day of my senior year, the chairman of special education who never wanted me at that school them came up to me and said he was wrong. That was the best compliment I ever gotten.  And when I got my diploma he was the first one to congratulate me. And we both had tears coming down our faces.

To be continued……………….