I was very fortunate to stumble upon my very good friend, Nancy... we were in a classroom with other children who had similar disabilities as we did. Nancy had a heart defect along with a learning disability, and I was, and still am, visually impaired as well as having a hearing disability. Our friendship developed helping and supporting each other during school days. For example, when we went down the hall for different activities, she would guide me safely to and from our destination, and I would counsel her when she needed advice.
I thought about all the different people I learned about growing up and the differently able community was the only group left out. Growing up black, I know what it's like to be different. I know what it's like for people to look at you weird on public transportation or for people to talk to you like they’ve never been around “your type” before. That happens when a person really isn’t educated about a certain community. As a kid I was never really taught about blindness and how it affects a person.
Pathways 2015 brought a diverse group of blind and visually impaired youth from all over Chicagoland. Students began by meeting the Pathways staff, reuniting with friends from previous summers, as well as meeting new friends.
He had ridden motorcycles since he was twelve years old, perching on the back of his older brothers for rides bummed to school or just to go riding in the summer. At the earliest age allowed by his parents, he had secured his very own. Through the years, he had owned one kind of bike or another, always moving up and getting larger. Now, after much hard work and saving, it was a six years old 1965 Harley Davidson salvaged from a police auction.
I can’t speak for the original, genteel Southern Kellers, but it was a privilege to keep house for century Kellers and as much of their languid estate that would fit in our pint-sized theater. My Kellers opened their home to scores of Minnesota arts enthusiasts, but mostly the pack of 21st shied away from hob-nobbing with the locals...
Televisions were much smaller long ago in the bygone era of 1993. Reception was much spottier, too, and the sound quality was not nearly so … Dolby surround. You might have to fiddle with your antennae to get the picture to stand still in 1993. Some of you might say, “That was the year I was born,” and I will scoff, because surely there can be no creatures as young as you. But I digress. Our technologies may have been a shadow of your current, twenty years sleeker and more intuitive devices, but we knew touch-screens and Google Glass-ware were in our future. They were there already, inhabiting our fuzzy screens as all of us tuned into Star Trek: The Next Generation. Well, maybe not all of us, but at least three eleven-year-old girls, drawn together by our lack of athleticism, scholarliness and ability to read social cues. Glued to the television each week: I, with the thick glasses and mouth-crank speech impediment, Sarah the heavyset and asthmatic, and Deena, tiny, black and soft spoken. We founded our own Starfleet against the specter of advancing algebra and well-dressed children who seemed to sniff out our thrift store clothes.
