Since this post deals with my experiences in elementary school, I thought I’d share my education timeline that I created for a graduate course last summer: https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/1060748/Personal-Education-Timeline-of-Kimberly-Schultz/.
In contrast to the years leading up to Kindergarten, my memories of K-4th grade are mainly positive as I experienced a lot of growth in those years. I graduated from PT before I started Kindergarten. I had the last of my three eye surgeries during the fall of Kindergarten. I stopped having to wear my orthotics during the day in 1st grade. And I stopped having to wear my AFO at night during 3rd grade.
As the years progressed and I got older, I felt like I could blend in more with everyone else. Without braces on my legs, it wasn’t immediately apparent to people that I had a disability. I earned good grades and made friends at school. I played all sorts of sports, including soccer and tennis.
But every so often there were moments that punctured this sense of normalcy.
In 2nd grade, a friend told me that one of our classmates said I was handicapped. Just like when the girl in preschool asked me if I broke my leg because I had a cast on my leg, I didn’t have the language to respond to that comment in a constructive way since I still didn’t realize that I had a disability. Lacking the knowledge and language to explain that I had a disability that made the left side of my body weaker, I responded by saying “No I’m not. Does it look like I’m in a wheelchair?” Today, I realize how that comment was ableist and regret having said it every time I think of this moment.
One time in 4th grade as our class was lining up after a bathroom break, a classmate asked me if I limped because I broke my leg. This time I simply responded no.
One boy often teased me because of my gait. One time at lunch during 4th grade, he was sitting next to me and asked: “Why do you walk like you’re crippled?” For a second I sat silently not knowing how to respond as usual. But I finally responded by asking “Why do you talk like you’re on crack?” I hate that I responded this way. In the moment, I was trying to deflect and save face in front of my friends, but there is no excuse for responding this way.
I remember someone once saying that you never forget the moments when someone said something to hurt you; and you never forget the moments when you said something to hurt someone else. They are right. The moments where my insecurities got the best of me and caused me to put others down have never escaped my memory.
Besides these rare moments, I loved school and I loved learning because it came easy to me. Academics were the one area in life that I could truly excel and feel confident about myself. Although I was always playing some type of sport, I was never athletic like my brother, and though adults always said I had the prettiest hair, I never thought I was pretty. All I wanted was to look like my sister with brown straight hair. Looking back now, I realize that I internalized this idea that if I couldn’t prove that I was smart, then it meant that I was worthless because I wasn’t athletic or beautiful. I would never admit that I was wrong when getting into a childish argument with my siblings because to admit that I was wrong meant admitting a mistake. Admitting I was wrong meant admitting weakness.
I titled this post “The Elementary Years” not only because it’s about my years in elementary school, but because those years were a time of simplicity for me. It was the time period in my life where I experienced the most surface levels of what it meant to have hemiparesis.
I no longer had to go to therapy, and I stopped having to wear braces to school. Yes, I still struggled with having to wear the AFO at night up until 3rd grade, but most days I could still feel like everyone else when I was at school.
But I had yet to learn that I had a documented disability. I had yet to confront how having a physical disability affected me socially, mentally, and emotionally. I had yet to come to terms with the fact that I did not, and would never, run as fast as my peers.
It was a time of innocence and naivete for me. I thought since I stopped having to go to therapy and I stopped having to wear braces that I had “overcome” whatever made me different from others in the first place. That whatever it was, it was something that I simply grew out of in 8 years.
Reading posts from special needs moms about when their child asked the question: “When will I stop having cerebral palsy” or made comments along the lines of believing that they would simply grow out of their disability, makes me realize that this is probably common among those of us who have had a disability since before we can remember. The adults, and even older siblings, in our lives don’t wear braces or go to therapy. Besides the elderly, adults we see on TV don’t use wheelchairs, walkers, or crutches. They don’t even have a limp. If children with disabilities don’t see an older person who looks like them and shares their experiences, then it’s easy for them to think that people who are older simply can’t have a physical disability.
If a child can’t see themselves represented in the world around them, then it’s easier for them to believe that they don’t belong in the world as they are; that to belong in the world, they need to fit the media’s definition of what it means to be “normal.” In my case, I denied that there was anything wrong with me during elementary school. I hid from anything that suggested I was different. While at the time, it made me happier and seemed to make my life easier, hiding from my differences and my identity made things worse in the long run.
“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
a-symmetry 