What is the essence of living with disability? Or just what are your thoughts on disability in general (or Special Olympics)?

From my personal experience, having been romantically involved with a disabled woman over the last 8 or 9 years, it’s more an inconvenience than anything else, and it soon diminishes in importance as a disabled person becomes just another person to you.

I’d imagine love, for better or worse right?As for the olympics, it shows what can be achieved through fortitude & strength of mind & body.

It’s honestly not that big a deal, and is only worth mentioning because it’s so widely misunderstood.

From my experience with people who were disabled in some way or another as well as with my own life as a high functioning nutter, disabled people would really rather that you treat them as just people, who, oh by the way, happen to have a disability. Which is nasty, but oh well. Life goes on.

You can treat us like poor little victims who deserve to be cried rivers about for having to lead such a horrible life, or like brave heroes who are so awesome for overcoming insurmountable odds and achieving what would be mediocre by normal standards… but please don’t. That sort of story may appeal to non-impaired people, but to the impaired it’s so old and cliché it has fossils embedded in its beard. These are people who have gotten over all of that and learned to deal with it.

I suppose there’s some disagreement among the disabled over whether a disability is in hindsight something wonderful that made them who they are now, or it really is a defect and you just make the best of it anyway. Personally I’ve come to avoid people who are proud of their disability and think of it as an important part of their identity, but then again I should admit that being a high functioning headcase offers a lot more perspective for improvement than being in a wheel chair.

To behave as much as possible as if you were no more disabled than anyone around you. To thrive despite any “disability,” and to not use your disability as an excuse to avoid any major life activities.

I am a 100% disabled veteran, and I’ll be damned if I will let it slow me down! : )

@CaptainHarley
Hear, hear.

Someone in my family is a wheelchair user. Sometimes it is just about accessibility issues. He tries to find wheelchair accessible apartments, or restaurants, etc. making numerous phone calls and sometimes arriving only to find himself looking up at a bunch of stairs. He tried to convince a small town post office to put in a ramp instead of making him go through the ramp in the back where they unload crates. (They did finally build a ramp.) Some of the local shops he could not go into at all. We went to restaurants where the tables are too close together to allow him to navigate to the salad bar. Daily obstacles are non stop, from sidewalks with curbs to not being able to reach the products on the top shelf, and dealing with rude people staring. There are simple daily aggravations like when a bunch of college kids takes the last handicapped parking spot.

He has to constantly navigate a complex medical system trying to get specialists to communicate with each other and fighting insurance battles for some equipment or thing that he absolutely needs to function like a normal human. It means when traveling trying to find accommodations that suit him, calling hotels and asking about handicapped bathrooms, planning trips around what is accessible and what is not. We went to Disney World and he could only ride a few of the rides. We went to the Appalachian Mountains and only found a few paved accessible trails, and had to find scenic road routes to see the views. He is brilliant, has strong upper body strength, but is paralyzed below the first lumbar. He wants people to see him as an equal human being instead of treating him like Tiny Tim or some sad cripple.

He never would participate in Special Olympics because it was mostly focused of the mentally handicapped. However he was very interested in Para Olympics. He is even more interested in seeing people with disabilities be allowed to participate in the “real” olympics.

He participated in many protests outside courthouses with a group of other activists that were handicapped over laws and accessibility issues. The group blew me away. They called themselves ADAPT.

Here is a clip of an ADAPT protest where 91 handicapped protesters were arrested.
Helpess? Pathetic? I think not. They are a strong, dedicated bunch and a force to be reckoned with. Very moving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbaDh8Ywf-s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIr7ZT1-XPQ

My boyfriend is quadriplegic (C5 – complete). He deals with accessibility issues and the things @escapedone7 describes, he tends to roll with it (pun intended, with apologies to mabl8tr). Some things are more annoying than others, slight vent ahead for example, last night we went to the movies. In the parking lot most of the handicapped spots were taken. The one that was open was impossible for him use because the driver in the next spot was so far over the line. In order to be sure there would be enough room for him to operate the lift to get himself in and out of the van we had to park way in the boondocks. It was raining and the ground was soaked. I was there to push him, but if I hadn’t been, by the time we got to the sidewalk he would have been soaked to his elbows. These are the types of things people don’t think of unless they or someone they love are dealing with them.

Near as I can tell, the main message he would like to get across to the able bodied community is that individuals with disabilities can do pretty much everything anyone else can do, they just do it differently. The main message I would like to get across is that he is just a guy who broke his neck. He isn’t a hero and he isn’t to be pitied, he is a person living the life he was given and dealing with it best he can – just like the rest of us.

Thanks, @SuperMouse, I have been singing this song about my girlfriend here on Fluther for months. It’s hard to get my friends to understand that the heroism of my girlfriend is not that she can ski and sail, but that she spent two years trying to find a job in her profession (she has an advanced degree) experiencing the silent prejudice that keeps the disabled out of our quotidian world, even though there is nothing she can’t do as well as any fully abled person.

@dpworkin I totally agree with your sentiments. I do admire my man for the way he deals with his disability with grace, patience, and class, but he is really just a guy moving through this world like everyone else.

What all this means in reference to your question is this. You are writing a play for a theatrical group. Some of the group have disabilities. You don’t mention what kind. Some things to consider from what all that has been said are the following points.

1. You will need to make sure the stage is accessible, as well as the furnishings on the set.

2. You might want to rethink over focusing on the fact some of them have disabilities and focus more on the fact they are just people, and actors and actresses. The play doesn’t necessarily have to be about their disabilities does it? It would be a grand way to demonstrate that disabled people can be just people, and not their disability. Your theater group would know infinitely more about living with a disability than you would. If the assignment is absolutely supposed to be about life with a disability, then I would suggest requesting to interview them. We don’t know if they are blind, walk with crutches, use a chair… I would think just the scenes and the set should take this into an account. Leave out the tap dancing and karate scenes and you should be fine. Just make it a good play and let them be the actors and actresses they obviously want to be. They face all the same life issues you do. They fall in love, fall out of love, argue with family, just like everyone else in the world. It may be enlightening to just portray them as people who happen to use a different mode of getting around.

3. Special Olympics seemed to me to be more of a pity fest for the mentally deficient, and exactly the kind of thing a person that wants to be viewed as a competent successful individual may shun.

Treat us just like a normal person- because we are.

I hate it when people talk about how ‘brave’ or whatever the hell I am. I’m not- I freak out about silverfish, I hate the dark and large crowds give me the heebies. I’m just a person doing what people do- surviving and trying to have a good time once in a while.

For me, it’s about some things I miss doing, and future things I won’t be able to do.