Living Among Painted Porch Furniture

• July 8th, 2007

I painted all the chairs on my porch, well not technically, my friend Sam actually did most of the painting but I was there. It was a great day visiting with my friend and watching chipped and rusted chairs become bright and shiny, nothing like a new coat of paint to change the entire look.

I was really not interested in painting them myself, but very interested in them being painted. My friend knew this and without a lot of fuss (well maybe a bit), he set out to make it happen. We need friends like this, people who have the willingness to do something for someone without a lecture of how the person could do it themselves. Of course I knew I could paint the chairs, but the act of friendship is not something you do alone, and that is what took place on a breezy day in May.

So much of our work with people with disabilities is about what they can do for themselves, why we have devoted an entire paper industry towards proving that is all we focus on as if this progress is the only value to hold. Well I don’t agree, sometimes we need a friend who will do something just because……People with disabilities don’t have enough of those types of friends, maybe none of us do, but I’m lucky I have Sam.