"Retarded"

Retarded comes from the Latin word retardare.  It means "to be slow, to be delayed, to impede progress"

Every person on this planet is slow at something, delayed at something, not nearly as progressed as someone else at something.

I can sing.  I am also fabulous with dates and facts in a historical context.  I love reading classic literature.  I am horrible beyond horrible at math.  I am not coordinated.  I'm forgetful.

I know brilliant engineers that can't read a map.  I know people with very high IQs who can't spell to save their life.

Here we are, born perfect.  Perfect arms and legs.  Perfect brains.  Just the right amount of genetic material.

And yet, we all are horrendously under-developed at something.

The fact is, we have everything we need to reach a very high potential.  We just don't try.  I COULD become a passable basketball player, but I know my weaknesses so why try?  You COULD, although you think you are tone deaf, practice long enough to train your brain, ear, and vocal chords to work together in order to hum Mary Had a Little Lamb perfectly, but why?  You get along very well not knowing how to sing.

There are men, women, boys, and girls in this country who are very intelligent.  And, they do nothing but try.  They put their entire heart and soul into trying things that they are not naturally good at.  And they succeed.  They are widely successful.  If I put the amount of effort that these folks put toward meeting their goals into, say, learning Arabic, I would be fluent in 6 months. 

I am proud of these people.  And I want to be like them.  The irony, though, is that this group of individuals works so hard...so very very hard...to fit in to a society that takes one look at them and labels them.

They're Retarded.

They, by no fault of their own, have been born with one less or one more chromosome.  That tiny little chromosome makes all the difference in a person's ability to think, react, reason, learn, and apparently be accepted as valuable in society.

Here we are, completely perfect.  Easily pursuing the things we love, carelessly tossing off the things we don't or can't do.  And thoughtlessly casting a glance at someone who has had to work years to form words correctly and think, "They sound retarded."

Enough.

Do you hear me?  Enough.  No one deserves to be called Retarded.  I don't care if you are an Oxford graduate who can't play piano or have been born with Down Syndrome.  Enough.

I used to throw that word around.  I meant no harm.  I would never ever say it to a person's face who obviously had some type of mental or developmental delay.  But, then my niece, Adalie, was born.  A couple days later we learned that she had Down Syndrome.
Life changed.  My compassion for others sky-rocketed.  I grew up.

We all need to grow up.

You may think its no big deal to laugh and call your friend retarded for forgetting her keys in her car.  And I know full well you don't mean anything by it.  But each time that word gets put out into the world it creates an atmosphere. My sister and brother-in-law don't want Adalie growing up in that atmosphere.

Inevitably, a choir director will talk about a retard at the end of a musical phrase and someone has to laugh and make a play on words.  I know that person doesn't hate people with mental disabilities.  But, my heart gets sad.  Sweet little 6-year-old Adalie loves to sing.  She will have had to work so hard to read music, anunciate, and succeed in choir, and another person can just stroll in, take a seat, sing, and make off-handed comments that separate her efforts from the rest of the group.  Her efforts, though far exceeding the efforts of everyone else, are told they count for nothing when another "Retarded" pollutes her atmosphere.

Many of you are far more compassionate that I.  Many of you did not need a cute little red-head born into your family to learn to accept others.  Its my tragic regret that I was so unaware before Adalie's birth, but I am happy to try to make a difference now.

Its a small thing, really.  Its just a word.  Let's retire it and find other ways of playfully mocking ourselves and our friends.  I'm all for having a good time, and joking around.  But let's keep to the billions of others words in the world, if you don't mind, and create an atmosphere where learning to build sky scrapers and learning to hold a pencil correctly are equally applauded for the triumphs that they are to those individuals.