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This I Believe

• July 10th, 2006

In junior high school I met Barbara Sperber, who had been labeled as mentally retarded. Barbara was the perfect target for adolescent immaturity and ridicule and she lived in my neighborhood. During school I hung out with my crowd and Barbara hung out with no one. It was only after school, that I would sometimes see her and make myself “available” to talk. One day on the bus ride home Barbara was being teased relentlessly and though I did not join in I also did nothing to intervene. When she stepped off the bus and the jeers continued I looked out my window and I saw her, I mean really saw her. She was looking up at the row of windows on the big yellow bus and she was crying. I will never forget that day, that image or the fundamental change that took place within me that very moment. I saw Barbara for the first time as a person. It was with this glance I gained the understanding of what is required to abuse someone, you must not think of them as a person, because if you did it becomes so difficult to participate in or even allow.

So 30 years ago I began my career as a support worker, living in group home with 8 folks with developmental disabilities. I believed at that time that I kinda just fell in to the job, but as the time passed I realized that the teaching was not from me, far from it. And maybe this was not an accident. I witnessed incredible tolerance and patience from the people I lived with; mostly towards me. I learned about perseverance and determination in order to claim a right to live in your own community. And I learned about how little I had developed those qualities though most of my friends and family attributed them to me because of where I worked and most importantly with whom.

That day so long ago has shaped and changed me in countless ways. Every time I look away from the famine in Africa, or the poverty in India. Anytime I brush off the comments of an elderly person in a nursing home or walk past a homeless person without a glance, I am reminded of that lesson so long ago, you must first believe the object of your abuse or neglect is somehow less than you….less of a person.

I believe in equality, not the kind the US Constitution speaks about, but rather what comes forth from my heart, my attitudes and my actions. The kind that supports every person’s right to be treated as if they belong here and to be treated equally when it comes to my own actions. The belief that everyone first and foremost is a person of worth and when that yellow bus of a world chucks them out with jeers and name calling, there is someone looking up and crying….just like Barbara Sperber. This is what I believe and I strive to live it everyday.