The Big R

“Retarded” as been used three times in the past six months aloud in my office: “That’s retarded!” “He’s so retarded!” “I’m not a retard!” Each time, the word flew right out of a cubicle, clear and loud, for all to hear.

Anyone older than 5 could imagine many words that would cause quite a stir – not to mention a lawsuit – if they flew with such abandon right out of cubicles. “Retarded” and “retard” don’t seem to be among those words.

I Googled the word and turned up some 18 million hits (down from more than 19.1 million when I Googled it two years ago, so that’s progress). Hits have included a band with the name, “retarded animal babies,” and “movie criticism for the retarded”, which on Google scored right ahead of “Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons”, so that’s progress.

Jill and I often think of how Alex looks to other people: on the street, in restaurants, at the airport and on the bus and the subway. Many people still look at Alex. Sometimes Alex notices them, sometimes not. Sometimes he answers them in a somewhat appropriate way if they ask him a question; sometimes not. “That’s the way they communicate,” one woman said to me once in a McDonalds, meaning autistic people, about whom she seemed to know something; I somehow thought it a kind observation, though I was just guessing.

Alex is a nice-looking kid. Dark hair and eyes. A killer glance when he makes eye contact. Slim, downright skinny; it’d be hard for most people older than 5 to see him as any kind of threat.

Not like the time an “older” guy from a special-needs high school in Ned’s school building got into Ned’s first-grade classroom. “He ran in and sat on the teacher’s chair,” Ned recalls, adding that he himself hid under his desk until somebody came and fetched the young man. A few days after that incident, when Jill picked Ned up from school, Ned’s teacher said Ned was great when the guy came in, telling her not to be scared and that the guy was just “sensitive, like my brother.” I like that somebody else had to tell me this about Ned, and I especially like that S word.

The New York Times reported yesterday that marketers are showing increasing support for the disabled. Special Olympics is also taking pledges from visitors against hurtful language (“Spread the Word to End the Word”).