Words Are Not To Be Played With: An Appeal To The City of Galt, California

There's this town in Northern California called Galt.  They have a Facebook page and a Twitter account.  According to their Wikipedia page, "The population was 23,647 at the 2010 census, up from 19,472 at the 2000 census." Still a small town by most standards.

How did this town come across my radar?  Someone on Twitter retweeted this article by the National Down Syndrome Society about Special Ed's Brewery in Galt, California, owned by Ed and Cheryl Mason.

The article concludes with a request that we contact Mark Crews, Galt's mayor. Listed his email address, his phone number, his fax number, Galt's Facebook page and Twitter account.

I am as much into word play as the next gal, but I draw the line at word play that could be hurtful.  I figured, as was confirmed by this article in The Sacramento Bee that the owners of this restaurant, Ed and Cheryl Mason, merely meant that as a play on words.

As Cheryl states, " “People are complaining about the name. The name is Special Ed’s Brewery, not Special Ed Brewery. My husband has been known as Ed or Eddie all his life, and he’s special to me,” she added.

She mentions they had no intention of making fun of special needs people.  I would take that statement at face value, except for one thing.  Their advertising slogans are anything but innocent.  As quoted in the National Down Syndrome Society article, one slogan is, "ride the short bus to special beer."  That is bad enough, but the second slogan, mentioned in The Sacramento Bee article is really beyond the pale.  "'tard tested, 'tard approved."

These slogans make Cheryl Mason's claims really disingenuous.  I have no doubt that she think her husband, Ed, is special.  But this couple crossed the line to objectionable language that is hurtful and filled with prejudice against the special needs people they claim not to be insulting. At the very least these folks are simply being ignorant.  At the worst they are being malicious.

Perhaps, as a writer, I am more aware of words and their meanings than the average person.   There's an old saying, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me."  Words do hurt.  They can go straight to the heart as sure as any bullet.

Our daughters Kid O and Kid Q both have special needs.  Kid O is  severely disabled and cannot speak.  Kid Q is ablebodied, but she is learning disabled.  As their mother, I am aware of what an uphill battle they both face in terms of being accepted by a society that values conformity over anything else.  I know that because I knew as a kid that I didn't fit in.  As hard as I tried, the more I was aware that I was an outsider. I gave up trying because being a nonconformist was better than being depressed trying to be a conformist.

I have always wanted to fit in.  I felt for years as if everyone was joining hands in one big circle and I was running around the outside looking for someone to let me join in.  It has made for a very lonely and painful existence.

Our daughters and their Special Ed classmates have challenges ahead of them. Kid O, who is now twenty, can be very primal.  Sometimes she screams at the top of her lungs.  I know that some people have assumed that we are either neglecting her or harming her.  We know that we are taking care of her the best we know how.  It would help if either she could speak or we were telepathic.  She does her best to communicate, and we do our best to understand.

Kid Q just graduated from 8th grade. Sometimes she panics and sometimes she even wanders off.  Early last September she had a bout of insomnia that caused her to wander off in the middle of the night. Thankfully I am a light sleeper and heard her slam the front door  as she left the house.  I woke up my sound sleeper husband and we, with the help of a few friends, went searching for her.  My husband and good friend brought her back about a half an hour later.  Except for the fact that she was barefoot, she was otherwise safe and sound.  We never did find her gym shoes.

I do my best to reassure Kid Q.  I do my best to be with and take care of Kid O without expressing frustration or resentment.  One thing they both know is that I love and accept them.  My husband and I are one of the few people who will love them unequivocally.

Aside from love, an individual needs and deserves respect.  We all deserve to be treated with dignity.  I know that I have been scrutinized by neighbors and strangers ever since Kid O was a baby.  People stare at us all the time. Someone, probably a kid responding to a dare, wrote "Mental" on our masonry.
One kid once made some noise at us while I was rolling Kid O to her bus.

When we casually toss around words like "retard" or "'tard" or "moron" or "idiot," we usually mean to express contempt.  It's a way, similar to the use of racial or religious slurs, of denying someone's  humanness. We can only express contempt towards people who we don't know.  Many people do not know people with mental or physical disabilities.  Or, if we do, the disabilities are perhaps more mild and that makes it easier for us to accept.  It makes it easy to use these words because there's no one who comes to mind.

As AM Baggs said, "Only when the many shapes of personhood are recognized will justice and human rights be possible." I wrote to expand upon that idea.

There are people behind these words. Although Shylock was talking about being a Jew when he said this:  " If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die," it can be applied to all people who seem to be different from ourselves.

Mentally and physically disabled people are no different from the rest of the population.  They have needs. They have desires. They love and are loved. They laugh. They cry.  When they are pricked, they bleed.  When they are called names they die.  Not literally but words do affect the heart and the spirit.  It's a death by inches.

According to Cheryl Mason, we are all being "ridiculous" in our reactions on behalf of people we love and care about.  That doesn't seem apologetic to me.  My impression is that she resents being called out on her prejudices.  No one wants the Masons to close down their business.  We simply want her and her husband to have some compassion towards mentally and physically disabled individuals.

It's not my intention to hurt the Masons. I simply want them to be aware that words are not to be played with. If they are willing to make a move in that direction then my little petition  will go away.  

Tiny Tim Has a Telepathic and Very Dark Conversation With a Young Woman in Wheelchair

Note: Apologies to Charles Dickens and to people who love Dickens, especially Christmas Carol.

Imagining Tiny Tim as a young man somehow transported through time and space from 19th Century England to 21st Century America. When I mention the girl in the wheelchair talking, she is really using telepathy.


"God bless us everyone," Tim says to himself in a mocking tone. "Bloody hell," he continues as he moves a crippled claw to his mouth to take a drag on the cigarette he is having during his fifteen minute break. It's almost Christmas time and Tim shivers while he stands outside of the sheltered workshop where he works. He snorts with derisive laughter. A cripple doing menial labor. Some perverse irony in that, he thought. That strange girl in the wheelchair laughed all the time. She couldn't do much of anything. Often times she will drop things just to watch him pick it up. She annoyed the hell out of him. At the same time he sometimes couldn't help but laugh with her.

Fate, Tim mused, had been very unkind to him. He roundly cursed out Scrooge's ghosts. "Crazy old coot," he muttered. "All that talk about ghosts showing him the past, present and future." Why couldn't the bastard let him die. What kind of life was this working for pennies a day folding napkins and placing them together with a plastic fork and knife, sliding them into a cellophane wrapper and placing them on a conveyor belt where a machine sealed the cellophane shut? Tim sighed. He had been so optimistic as a boy. Back to work.

He was starting to fold napkins again when he heard a feminine voice speak. "We really are blessed," the voice said. Tim looked around. The only one next to him was the girl in the wheelchair who couldn't talk. She had dropped a whole bunch of plasticware on the floor. Tim picked it up. "Kind of ridiculous, isn't it," the voice continued. "expecting a someone with spastic fingers to do this kind of work." The girl laughed uproariously. Tim did a double take. "Wait that was you, wasn't it? But how...?"

"It's telepathy, Tim," she responded. And laughed some more. "I am so bored," she added. "Aren't you?"

"Is that why you keep dropping napkins and plasticware?"

The girl giggled again.

"My folks used to call it ablebodied fetch," she explained.

"Used to," Tim asked, as he bend down yet again to pick things up the girl had dropped.

The girl shrugged. At least that is how he interpreted it. Then he saw something he had never seen before. She looked very sad.

"What happened to them," he asked as he straightened up yet again.

"My mom threw herself in front of a trolley in Philadelphia," the girl said sadly.

Tim felt the color drain from his face. How could she laugh at all, he wondered. If his mother had done that, he wouldn't be able to function at all. At least his mother was still alive and sometimes she and his sisters came to visit. "And your dad," he was afraid to ask.

"My dad couldn't function without her," the girl explained. "No one to make calls for him or pay the bills. He lost the house I grew up in. Everything except his bicycle. He's homeless now and often can be seen muttering to himself and crying."

Tim put a hand on her shoulder. "I am so sorry," he said, reflecting on how his own dad died from a heart attack one morning while crossing the street. He missed his dad, but at least he died of natural causes.

"I see him sometimes," she continued. "Every so often he seems to recognize me again and comes back to embrace me again the way he used to," she said, with a catch in her voice.

"He was in jail for a while for defacing currency," she added. "That is when my mom ... you know... it broke her heart... one thing too many she wrote in the note she mailed from Philly."

Tim averted his gaze. He felt a tear slide down his cheek. All this time he had been so annoyed with her. He had no idea.

"Hey," she said. "At least I had her for as long as I did. The people at DCFS didn't take me and my sister away. They could have."

He looked surprised. She had never mentioned a sister before. Then again he never asked. "You have a sister? Does she ever visit you?"

The girl shrugged. "From time to time. She loves me. But I stress her out. She doesn't listen very well. My mom used to hear me. My sister only heard me on the outside. Just the noises you usually hear. My mom tried to get her to really listen, but she just wasn't able to. She does care in her own way. She sometimes sends me a check."

Tim understood. His sisters had their own lives. They had gotten married and had their husbands and kids to look after. Lives of their own. He sighed. He wished he had a life of his own. Instead of whatever this was. But at least if he opened up his mind and his heart, he could finally hear her and have someone laugh with during the day. He sighed and continued on with the piecemeal work they were assigned to do.

"How come I can suddenly hear you," he asked.

The girl laughed. "You're a tough nut to crack, Tim. I've tried dozens of times."

He looked away ashamed. He had been so bitter about his own circumstances that he never really tried to connect with her.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly.

"It is OK, Tim. Honest. I know you have had a lot on your mind."

Didn't excuse his bad behavior, he thought to himself. "Nah. Should have tried to talk to you. That way we both could have had companionship."

They worked a little longer in silence. So many things he wanted to ask her.

"How did you end up at this sheltered workshop," he finally asked.

The girl looked away as if to a far off place.

"She gave up," she said softly. "She just couldn't fight any more. And then when my dad went to jail for defacing currency, well, that was the straw that broke the camel's back."

Tim thought for a moment. "Did she say goodbye to you," he asked.

"She didn't have to," the girl responded. "I knew." After a moment she continued. "She said goodbye, anyway, but we almost conversed the way that you and I are doing. That's how close we were."

They worked together in silence.

"She and I hugged heads."

Tim looked up. "What do you mean, hugged heads?"

"When I was a baby, my mom used to reach down and tell me 'hug heads,' and she would hug my head and I would reach up and hug hers. And that is what we did before she left for Philadelphia. That is how she said goodbye to me."

They worked on in silence. Tim didn't know what to say to this girl, this young woman who he had simply thought of as a bother.

"Wouldn't it be great," he finally said at last, "if they treated us as if we were fully human and not imbeciles just because we are disabled."

The girl nodded. "Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if others listened to me the way you just did."

"I am sorry that I didn't listen sooner," Tim said. He wondered if, by listening now, these shadows could disappear just like they did for Scrooge.

"That is OK. You are listening now," the young woman said. "That is really all that matters."

"Yeah," he said.

A few minutes later he added, "You are right. We are blessed."