A Conference Encounter

I once attended an interesting presentation at the National Collegiate Honors Conference. At the session, I sat with my friends and watched as people from other schools filed in to the not-so-large room. One of them was a young man followed by two women who sat in the front row. After a moment, the session proctor stood to introduce the presenters. At that moment, I realized that something different was happening in the room; one of the women I had noticed with the young man began to sign what the proctor said. It was obvious whom her audience was—she did not stand for the entire room to see, no introduction was made nor explanation given—she was there solely for the young man she was accompanying. I sat there watching with unabashed interest as the woman spelled out each presenters name and mouthed the words of the proctor silently to the young man whose face I could barely see from behind and to the side. Then, it was the first girl’s turn to speak and the whole thing continued.

For each word, a sign was given or spelled out and I actually caught a few with the woman’s sometimes exaggerated facial expressions or mouthing. It was like watching some sort of interpretive dance being given about the presentation. Watching her gave me something else to focus on than the speaker sitting placidly behind the desk. Her gestures were tight, controlled and did not attract much attention, but they easily conveyed the points she wanted. Sometimes, when an idea was too abstract to be easily conveyed by one sign, I would see her tilt her head and sign to the young man that she wanted to say something like what she was literally signing. The young man would nod in understanding and then the woman would move on to catch up with the speaker. On some rare occasions the signer even asked the speaker to repeat a phrase or two so that she could understand what had been said. Meanwhile, I watched as the name “Othello”—the topic of the first presentation—was shortened down to the simple sign for “O” to save time and other names were cut as well. I caught subtle changes between what the speaker would say and what the interpreter would sign because of what the woman mouthed to go with it. When the first presenter was done, the woman stepped down, and the other woman took her place.

The second interpreter was much less animated than the first and, to me, seemed to be the less experienced of the two. She was slower and at the same time required even less space than the first woman. Luckily for her, the second presenter’s character names were short and so they did not need to be abbreviated. Also, the topic was more concrete without as many abstracts to cause confusion. After a moment, I found my eyes wandering around the room and watching the speaker this time out of boredom. I wondered for one fleeting moment if the young man felt the same way, but realized that unlike me, he did not have the option of casually glancing about the room without drawing the woman’s attention to it. Soon though, it was time for the third speaker and the women traded places again.

During this entire process, I found myself wondering if anyone else in the room was as drawn to watching the women sign during the presentation as I was. Did it strike them as odd that this group walked around and translated wherever they went? What the presenters think of the women signing near the front of the room? Did they resent having the groups attention possibly diverted elsewhere? Then, the less complicated questions: What school are they from? Is he giving a presentation? Are they always together? Do they try to pick sessions that would translate well? Who gets to pick which sessions? I wanted to know what I could about all of them, but I was too afraid to ask. I was scared that my staring during the presentation would offend them, but then I realized that it was something that these women were trained to deal with. After all, what is the point of signing is no one is there to see it?

At one point during the session, a friend of mine leaned over and whispered something like, “How cool! I know some sign language too!” She then proceeded to try out a few letters of the alphabet and other random signs. I asked her to stop and she asked me why I thought she should. I gave her three reasons. For one, the women could see us and might think that she was mocking them and she did not want to be rude. The second was that they might think that she was trying to communicate with them. The third was that even if the women paid her no attention whatsoever they did need to concentrate and that would be easier without some odd girl toward the middle of the room signing random things in their line of sight. For my part, I was mostly concerned with the thought that the women might assume that we were mocking them; I did not want to seem rude. Even though I could not help but watch the women as they signed, I almost felt that that was alright somehow. It was as though since they were alright, staring was alright also.

When I left the session, it struck me that I had seen the young man walking around and never noticed anything different about him; he blended in with the other hundreds of people. I asked myself if maybe that was what he wanted. Granted, there was nothing low-key about being signed to during a session, but there was something anonymous about his disability the rest of the time. Today, I wish that I had spoken to the young man to ask him my questions, but I know that I would not have found a polite way to phrase them without seeming nosey or rude. My curiosity was my own and he was, and is, another human being that does not need to hear or answer every question I have about him. In the end, all I could do was wonder and watch and hope I caught on along the way.

An Exceptional Poet

Contemporary American poet, Paul Guest, frequently participates in casual poetry readings at Meacham Writers’ Workshop, regularly held at the University of Tennessee, in Chattanooga.  In the spring of 2006, Guest read several selections from his chapbook entitled, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World.  Paralyzed in a bicycle accident at age twelve, Guest is an uncommon writer whose life might demand pity, but he refuses the label of victim. 

            Two days of readings are typically followed by a casual reception at a participant’s home.  On this occasion, we were invited to a third-floor walk-up apartment, without handicapped access.  Confined to a motorized wheelchair, the only way Guest could participate in the festivities would be to allow others to carry him and his two hundred pound wheelchair upstairs.  He chose not to suffer that indignity, but rather remained outside, at street level, on the sidewalk.  I remember wondering at the time why there was no handicapped access to the building, but then I remembered it was a private residence, divided into three apartments.  Perhaps accessibility laws do not apply in this case.

One of the more popular poets present, Guest garnered much attention outside and many left the party upstairs to join him on the sidewalk.  I was one of those on the sidewalk.  We stayed there for over two hours reading our work, talking, drinking wine and having a wonderful time.   Not so upstairs.  When I returned upstairs some time later, I heard grumblings about the “prima donna” downstairs.  I heard, “How dare he hold court outside!  He could have brought a lighter chair.  He could have been carried upstairs!  He could have made other arrangements!”

I was shocked at what, to me, seemed only to be misplaced jealousy.  Most were genuinely happy to see Guest in attendance, whatever way they could spend time with him.  They were grateful he came.  Others, however, felt he should have suffered whatever indignity he had to, just to conform.  Many assumptions were made; assumptions that the disabled must suffer indignity to fit into the able-bodied world, that this poet must explain his reasons for not wanting to be carried upstairs, that this poet was somehow less for remaining outside, that this poet was a “prima donna” and expected to be catered to.  Nothing was further from the truth.  This poet acted with dignity and with respect for others.  I wish the same could be said for all, especially those who, with a little better planning and foresight, could have made suitable arrangements for all to be satisfied.

Mrs. Costilow

I entered my third-grade classroom with the trepidation that always accompanies the first day of school. It was a new teacher, one my older sister had never had. Her name was Mrs. Costilow. She was sitting in a large black chair in the front of the room, and after the bell rang and we all recited the Pledge of Allegiance together, she told us to come sit around her on the floor. As we crossed our legs in front of us and looked up at her, she pushed a small knob on her chair and moved towards us. I knew it was a wheelchair; I had seen them before. Mrs. Costilow turned to us, and started telling us a story.

She told us that one day she had been going to a meeting with three other teachers. They were crossing a train track, had looked both ways, but when they were driving over the tracks something happened to the car. It was stopped. They tried to get it started, but it wouldn’t go. Then, she told us, they heard the sound of a train. The other teachers got out of the car, but Mrs. Costilow was caught in her seatbelt. She was stuck in the car and the train hit her. Her legs got hurt so badly, she had to get new ones, she told us. Then she reached down, took off her leg, and held it up for us to see. “This is what my new legs look like,” she told us. She passed the leg around, but I didn’t want to touch it. She sat in her chair, rubbing the part of her leg that was left. There was a sock-like thing around the end of her leg. She told us that was to protect it, and that sometimes the fake legs hurt. She told us they were hard to walk on, so she used a wheelchair.

Mrs. Costilow never really talked about her legs after that first day. It seemed normal to have a teacher in a wheelchair. She was a lot of fun. Sometimes she would run over our feet in her chair (it didn’t hurt). In the Faculty Follies, a show where the teachers act out songs that they like, she played “The leader of the pack.” She pretended her wheelchair was a motorcycle. One day she got a flat tire and we had to wait in the hall for the janitor to pump it back up.
I always liked Mrs. Costilow, not for her legs or her wheelchair, but because she was a good teacher. When I was a freshman in college, my mother, who is a minister, took a job at a different church on the other side of town. My first time there, I saw Mrs. Costilow. She walks with crutches now instead of using her wheelchair. She was still nice.

My third-grade teacher was my first obvious encounter with anyone with a disability. I had grown up with my uncle, who is blind, but we never out-right talked about that until I was older. Mrs. Costilow came right out and talked about being in a wheelchair. When I read through the website cripcommentary.com, I couldn’t help but think about Mrs. Costilow. Maybe she was lucky that my elementary school was built during the seventies, and the coolest thing about it was the long, sloping ramps. She seemed so good-natured and open about everything that had happened to her. Maybe she had to be, since she taught eight-year old children.

Driving Blind

My Uncle Jeff is legally blind. When he was in high school he started losing his vision, and it went quickly. I grew up seeing his lack of vision as normal. I don’t remember if we ever had a big “revealing” or if it was just something I grew to understand, but my Uncle Jeff always looked sidelong at you. He always sat right next to the television, he asked his wife whether the platter in front of him had the dark sausage rolls or the light sausage rolls, because he couldn’t tell. He earned his degree from TTU in psychology, he holds a job working for the state as a psychologist, and he even competes in triathlons and half marathons. I’ve always respected him for just being a good person, never mind his disability.

This semester, though, I learned something new about my uncle. At the age of 16, his vision fading fast, my grandparents, his parents, spent thousands of dollars on telescopic glasses, hoping to buy him a little more time with his eyes. He took advantage of this and got his driver’s license. He never drove, but my grandfather made sure he had a car so that his friends could drive him around, even if they didn’t have a car themselves. What I learned, though, was that he still has a valid license. His oldest daughter, my cousin, is 15 and has a learner’s permit. The law states that anyone holding a learner’s permit must be supervised by a parent or guardian with a valid driver’s license in the front seat. My uncle, therefore, is technically able to do this, despite the fact that he can no longer read without extreme magnification.

When my grandmother told me this, she was so proud of him. She started crying thinking about how he’s held onto his driver’s license and his pride. At first, I was impressed too. But then I thought past his disability and thought that maybe, this was simply shockingly illegal. I am torn now between respecting him for being as normal as possible, and feeling appalled that he would be so irresponsible to consider himself adequate supervision for his daughter as she learns to drive.