Sunday, January 24, 2010

Class Entry

This week in Language Arts, we took a break from talking about sexism (thank god- no offense Brittany but you have got to accept the fact that there multiple sides to an argument and that by repeating your argument over and over again, you aren’t really changing anyone’s opinions about the subject.) Anyway, now we have moved on to something more melancholy- the topics of physical and mental disability. Looking back on it, this wasn’t really a change for the better (don’t know why I got so excited at the beginning). So, our first assignment concerning disabilities was to read an essay written by (I don’t remember her name but it was the lady with MS) concerning her disability known as MS or Multiple Sclerosis. I immediately connected with the woman since my algebra teacher in freshmen year (Ms. Hunt) also had this disease. I remember how she used to keep her room really cold because of her intolerance of heat which had something to do with MS. Anyway, the essay had its humorous side and its serious side. I was so perplexed as to how this lady came to terms with the fact that she could no longer use all of her limbs. I remember that I used to imagine what my life would be like if was missing an arm or leg and I just don’t know how I would cope. At the same time, I felt bad when she talked about her problems with depression.

On Friday, in class we went to the drama room where we first learned about the story of Christy Brown, who had lost the use of his entire body (except his left leg) due to the degenerative disease known as cerebral palsy. As a result, Christy did almost everything with his left food including writing. Because of this, as a class we tried to write our names using our left feet. I was actually pretty good at it considering I had never done it before in my life. This made me realize that perhaps coping with a degenerative disease wouldn’t be so bad after all. But then I pictured myself helplessly twitching on the ground with a nasty constipated look on my face (yea I have a weird imagination) and I decided that I’d rather not go there

The next thing we was watch part of a Spanish movie (true story) about a man who was paralyzed from the neck down and trying to cope with his disorder. Unfortunately, after living with his disability for 20 years the man decided he wanted to end his life. He did this by recording himself (and his last philosophical thoughts which were honestly quite disturbing) taking cyanide. This was extremely unpleasant and at this point I started questioning why on earth we had been watching and reading this stuff for the past week? Not surprisingly, I couldn’t come up with an answer. I felt like crap for the rest of the day.

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