Girl tells what it’s like to be disabled
By Nicolette Barischoff
Special to The Acorn

Nicolette Barischoff

School halls, lunch time. A clique of three or so girls congregates against the wall, evaluating male passersby, looking, while trying to make it look like they’re not looking. (Teenage girls are masters of this art.) The girls know each other only casually, but are not shy about making it known when an attractive guy is present. They whisper to one another as a particular specimen walks past. "So hot!" they laugh as the girl in the wheelchair makes a comment.

It is unnerving to hear such an opinion from her. She doesn’t really think about this sort of thing, does she? It doesn’t fit. They smile condescendingly. She’s trying to be like everybody else again.

It does not occur to them to think that the thoughts that tumble around inside the Wheelchair Girl’s head might be just as complex and interesting and blatantly resonant of sexuality as their own. Later, they will giggle and whisper in gushing amusement as The Girl attempts to put on makeup. God knows why. It simply does not fit into their preconceived image of her. She is too much a child. Too much a baby. She is a stereotype.

I suppose that we all feel a certain amount discomfort when somebody displays behavior that we have deemed "uncharacteristic." We have, each of us, a particular system for grouping people. We tend, subconsciously or consciously, to edit out the portions of a person’s being that contradict that system. It is a natural, normal and, yes, a very human thing to do.

But where does this system, which we have come to know as stereotyping, come from? Where do we get our ideas about the way people are "supposed" to behave? Think of it as the left-brain’s natural taxonomy. Stereotyping happens because your left brain needs a shorthand way of classifying the people you meet in everyday life.

Stereotypes, in and of themselves, are not a bad thing. They help us to make sense of this heavily populated world we live in and they are a quick way for us to form a general opinion of our surroundings without having to intensely study them. It is only when our natural propensity to stereotype interferes with getting to know an individual for the complex and multifaceted creature he really is that it becomes a problem.

The truth is there are so many facets to a human being that no fellow human being can make a proper study of them all in a single lifetime, and no stereotype, however reasonable, can ever accurately encompass all that a single person has to give.

Go ahead. I dare you to go in search of the tumbling, complex and interesting human thoughts behind the system. Get to know someone. Truly. I think you’ll find it’s almost always worth the work.

Nicolette is an orthopedically impaired student in Las Virgenes Unified School District who aspires to be a writer. October is Disabilities Awareness Month.