Re: A Story I Felt I had to Share
Blind schools really do have a tendency to leave a bad taste in one's mouth for a lifetime. I often have dreams about being back there myself, though they're usually bizarre and fantastical rather than disturbing. Still, the amount of coddling and sheltering most people who go to such places experience seems to never be purged. I'll tell a story of my own. I was dating someone at the time, we were both over 18. We would often hold hands at the table during lunch. Keep in mind that that's all it was, I wasn't trying to drive stick shift in front of a whole bunch of people if you know what I mean or something. Well, there was a certain teacher's aide who was constantly patrolling around the cafeteria. She would bark at us constantly to show her our hands. I felt like it was unnecessary, and the resentment just kept growing. Finally, my partner at the time decided to take a stand, so he slammed our clasped hands on the table in a show of defiance. As far as I remember, we were left alone for the most part after that. I was so over that place by that point that I thought it was one of the greatest things I'd ever done in my life thus far. That may sound extreme, and possibly quite immature, but consider the fact that, upon first arriving at the school, I was almost immediately treated to several teachers and aides gathering in doorways and talking none too quietly about students who were sitting nearby. I was appalled; I'd had some truly awful experiences in public school, but nothing shocked me to my core quite like hearing what were supposed to be authority figures talking crap about people who could clearly hear them. I was so shocked by this, in fact, that I made a grave mistake in my first few weeks there. I confronted a couple of the worst offenders, and calmly but firmly told them that they really should not be doing that, that they were setting a bad example and that I'd never seen anything like it. The two of them got real quiet, and acted remorseful for the moment, but then systematically started telling people in my classes that I was a bad influence and to stay away from me. I was called a devil worshipper, among other things, more than once. In a small school like that, especially when I was, shall we say, not part of the typical demographic, that pretty much sealed my fate as being untouchable. I admit that, once I discovered what was going on, I didn't do much to help my reputation, and I did have a few friends, but it all started because I stood up and said, "hey, don't gossip about people who can hear you, you wouldn't dream of doing that in your own friend circle, so damn well don't do it here when you're supposed to be acting as a professional." There was a propensity to treat all the students as though we were infants, and that gets really fucking old after about the first month, never mind the 4 years I spent there.
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