Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Erasure

It's been a little while, hasn't it? It's been so long, that I'm not even sure where I left off.  (Pausing a moment to read back and reflect. WOW....)

Since that last post, the old job has come to an end and I've changed jobs twice.  I had planned at the end of the first one to stay home and get our lives in order, and three days into CEO at home I had my first email for a phone interview. Two months after that, I'm back in the fire.

However, I'm not here to talk about any of that, because it's not that important. What I want to talk about is some of the stuff we are struggling with. The kids are all right, but they could be doing better. In particular,  we're struggling with erasure.

My son ran an enhancement (mini course) and was the student Wing Bowl winner. He also has autism and the yearbook editor 'forgot' to include himeven after promises from the yearbook moderator that he'd be included for both his enhancement and the wing bowl. Yet, there are pictures of kids' family vacations and certain kids enjoying winter break. And these things clearly didn't happen as part of school activities.  Wing bowl was covered, featuring a hunky student and announcing the adult winner. Hmm.

Adding insult to injury, the ONE club he enjoyed and participated was left out of the yearbook. Yes, LGBT, ethnic, all clubs were included.....except for the one that features mentoring students with disabilities. 

As if they don't exist. 

Take this all another step. The guy in our backyard takes down a tree on our property. Because, you know, "You have a full plate." (I loved that tree. I am bitter.) I drive home from work to find a neighbor allowing her dog to do its business on my lawn. When I wrote her a note asking her to PLEASE keep her dog off my lawn, she scribbles me a nasty note--as if I am the person in the wrong for NOT letting HER animal do whatever it wants on my property. 

This is death from a thousand cuts. Because we are who we are, it's almost like everyone feels they can do whatever they want to us, because, we are somehow less.

If this is the way the world is going, I don't want to live in it.