About Being Normal

A new acquaintance gets wide-eyed in asking a person with visual impairment how he goes about his day. She actually means how he crosses the street and takes a ride home. An employer is overwhelmingly amazed that his employee who has hearing impairment accomplishes work assignments with impressive information technology skills. Teachers get the jitters in having a child with autism in class. Are these new phenomena that common folk never cease to be amazed or sometimes be afraid of? They said, Homer who wrote the Iliad was blind. Quintus Pedius, a 1st century Roman painter was deaf. Someone may make the point that autism is a relatively new condition, but it has been publicized for around the past three decades already. When I was young, I have seen persons with total blindness walking with white canes, guiding each other along the streets in a subdivision in Naga. I have seen persons with hearing impairment communicating with each other through sign language in a church garden. I have seen guys with crutches walking about. My father had a friend who had one arm; and we would sometimes bump into him when eating out. I know a person with autism who would be called to fix the computer in an office when it gets bugged or lags down. Then, why do people get surprised as if facing something new? Why is a police officer amazed that a person with low vision knows exactly that he needs to walk a few meters ahead, turn left around the corner, turn right, cross the street and take a tricycle ride to make it home? Why does a mall security guard think a white cane is potentially a deadly weapon? Is it not “normal” to have persons with disability in a community?

If it has been normal for some persons in the community to have some sort of disability, normal being defined as typical, usual or expected, then, practices should conform to that state of normality. Are not rains, pains and gains all normal parts of life that we all prepare to adapt to them? Some rain gear are even worn in a fashionable style. We sing soulfully of our pains. We struggle to achieve gains. This is because they’re all normal. If disability has been as normal, then persons with it would be easily accommodated in pediatric clinics. They would be openly included in classes. They could easily enter employment. Accessibility in any facility would be a feasibility. I mean, it would be second nature to guide with one’s arm, sign with one’s fingers or let someone in crutches or a chair pass through. Walkways would be constructed for crutches and wheels to safely surmount, not because of legality but because of normality. Even fellow clients would be adept to assist, not on pity or policy, but because it is simply part of everyday life. Children could come to class, applicants could be accommodated, and opportunities would be opened, because they would be as normal as people of another race or religion. There would be no qualm or question, amazement or apprehension; after all, it is normal to have them all around.

But apparently, society is not ready to accept what since the ancients has been normal all along to be fixed in familiarity. In popular media, an actor could play the role of a blind person, just as long as he miraculously gets his sight or turns into some sort of a superhero before the story ends. In its reflection to real life, common folk just simply decline their disposition to implement inclusion. Those with disability could stay in the story or in society if they share some similarity with the rest of the community. But otherwise, they would stay in the status of burdens of inconvenience and intolerance. At the far end of the spectrum, they may be seen as oddities who have overcome, that are too difficult for their understanding. It is not really that society is not ready to accept, rather, they refuse to accept.

On the other hand, what society has lived with as “normal” is the distortion of the institutions and functions that build it in the first place. It has become “normal” for people in position to look after their own profit. It has become “normal” for commerce to consume the consumer. It has become “normal” for families to be in need of fixing. It has become “normal” to complain, rather than to comprehend. Distortion seems to be favored over disability. Then, what is normal?

July was Persons with Disability Month in Naga. July 17 to 23 was National Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Week. August 1 was White Cane Safety Day. August is Eyesight Saving Month.

“Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.” Proverbs 13:20