So the other day, I was at the vet's picking the dogs up (nothing serious, just the old bath and day-spa treatment) and had brought the kids with me. As we were waiting to checkout, I see a man pass by Kellie and try to hand her something. After he had left, she came over to me and handed it to me....it was about the size of a business card and it said:
"I am deaf...please give me what you can."
Kellie told me that she felt bad for the man....and it was about that moment that I was transported back in time.....it was 1978....and I was at the dreaded Fairview Heights Mall with my mother. I was browsing in a Walden's when I was approached by a man who handed me a card very similar to the one that would be handed to my daughter almost 30 years later. I didn't have anything, and when I got home I spoke to my Dad.
He had been raised by two parents who were both deaf...and I suppose I also felt some sense of guilt...some sense that I had an obligation to help out someone who was in a situation somehow (in my mind at least) similar to my grandparents. My Dad's reaction really surprised me.
"Do you want to know what your Grandmother would have done if she had been there?
She would have immediately started giving him what-for and told him to go out and get a job. Its people like that who cause the deaf and handicapped to get bad names.
Your grandmother would've told him that there was no reason he couldn't be working."
And as I stood there with Kellie, I retold the story. Of how indignant my grandmother would've been at the man--because she and my grandfather had raised five boys, despite both of them being deaf....and my grandfather had worked his entire life to make their lives better.
And to quote Yogi Berra.....it was deja vu all over again.
Later,
Jeff
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