Friday, March 28, 2003
when i was in high school, i volunteered as a tutor in the life skills program. that's what they called the effort to mainstream physically and developmentally disabled kids into the "regular" high school world. except the only time i could do it was fourth period, which was lunch for most of the kids in the program, so my work with them ended up being this kind of lunch-routine that i went through every day with one particular student, kevin. kevin was pretty severely disabled--or at least, it seemed to me. he had a physical disability that made it hard for him to walk--one foot seemed to be pointed the wrong way, and his body was sort of twisted around his own spine, with one arm bent at the elbow and twined up so that his hand rested by his own shoulder. also, there was a lot of drool. kevin couldn't control the muscles in his mouth very well, and so copious amounts of saliva would roll down his chin most of the time. he was capable of wiping it away himself, and his parents and teachers had tried really hard to impress upon him the desirability of keeping the drool at bay, but kevin, like most people, really hated being constantly nagged, and a lot of the time, wiping away the drool was just not something he was into doing. the aides had come up with a lot of joshing little verbal cues to get him to do it ("kevin, you've got a drool snake!" "kevin, there's a slug on your chin!"). it took about two reps of each to make me want to punch the aides out and say to kevin, hey, buddy. drool all you want. while i understood the value of small accomplishments in the context of the mainstreaming program, the choice of whether or not to wipe away the drool was one of the few things kevin got to decide for himself on a minute-by-minute basis, and i kind of respected that. it wasn't like the drool bothered him. i sometimes wanted to say to the nagging aides, you guys, it's not really the giant saliva string that's keeping kevin from going to the prom.
because it was lunch, my big thing was helping kevin eat in the cafeteria like some regular joe. his parents packed him a very detailed lunch every day . . . kevin had extremely limited dexterity--like, none, and there was the previously mentioned lack of mouth muscle control. folks who can't keep their saliva in their mouths usually can't keep their lunch in there, either. so the lunch, everyday, was some sort of casserole, a nutritionally-enhanced milkshake, and at the end, some chocolate.
here's the thing: i have never been a casserole fan. the idea of mashing a whole bunch of foods together has never been attractve to me, although i don't mind, say, quiche. but these casseroles were everything that grossed me out about casserole. they smelled funny. they looked gross. and i simply could not separate those casserole attributes from the ones that made it a viable lunch choice for kevin: casserole is easy enough to navigate that someone who has a lot of trouble using a fork can get enough into his mouth and swallowed to call it lunch, and when it gets slopped with drool and lands back on the plate in a puddle, you can mix it back with the rest and call it edible again.
it makes me feel small, but i was horribly depressed by the casserole lunch, and trying to help kevin eat it. even though i knew the casserole was one of the vew viable, sensible choices his family had when trying to pack a lunch that kevin could actually eat at school, when i got the big tupperware that contained it out of the fridge each day, i always kind of expected it to be labeled, "Disabled Kid Chow," as if it had been made by purina for feeding ease. it felt sort of dehumanizing. more than anything, the presence of the casserole was a big waving flag that read, i will not be going out for a cheeseburger with my friends after band practice. and then when the casserole was finished, the chocolate was its own small battle. it was usually a small-sized kit kat bar, and my job was to unwrap it and break it into manageable chunks (without singing the "gimme a break, gimme a break" song from the commercial, which for some reason really pissed kevin off) so that kevin could eat it with his fingers. except . . . man, if you thought drool was a problem with casserole, you should try chocolate. you know how your mouth waters when you get something yummy in it? yeah. personally, i've had problems with chocolate drool myself, and i'm not someone who has to wear a dishcloth around my neck and listen to people tell me i have a slug crawling down my chin.
this is all to say that when i opened the microwave at work yesterday after someone's lunch had been heated up, i smelled casserole and i immediately wanted to throw up. and then i heard a bunch of marketing guys making iraq jokes, and . . . well, shit.
because it was lunch, my big thing was helping kevin eat in the cafeteria like some regular joe. his parents packed him a very detailed lunch every day . . . kevin had extremely limited dexterity--like, none, and there was the previously mentioned lack of mouth muscle control. folks who can't keep their saliva in their mouths usually can't keep their lunch in there, either. so the lunch, everyday, was some sort of casserole, a nutritionally-enhanced milkshake, and at the end, some chocolate.
here's the thing: i have never been a casserole fan. the idea of mashing a whole bunch of foods together has never been attractve to me, although i don't mind, say, quiche. but these casseroles were everything that grossed me out about casserole. they smelled funny. they looked gross. and i simply could not separate those casserole attributes from the ones that made it a viable lunch choice for kevin: casserole is easy enough to navigate that someone who has a lot of trouble using a fork can get enough into his mouth and swallowed to call it lunch, and when it gets slopped with drool and lands back on the plate in a puddle, you can mix it back with the rest and call it edible again.
it makes me feel small, but i was horribly depressed by the casserole lunch, and trying to help kevin eat it. even though i knew the casserole was one of the vew viable, sensible choices his family had when trying to pack a lunch that kevin could actually eat at school, when i got the big tupperware that contained it out of the fridge each day, i always kind of expected it to be labeled, "Disabled Kid Chow," as if it had been made by purina for feeding ease. it felt sort of dehumanizing. more than anything, the presence of the casserole was a big waving flag that read, i will not be going out for a cheeseburger with my friends after band practice. and then when the casserole was finished, the chocolate was its own small battle. it was usually a small-sized kit kat bar, and my job was to unwrap it and break it into manageable chunks (without singing the "gimme a break, gimme a break" song from the commercial, which for some reason really pissed kevin off) so that kevin could eat it with his fingers. except . . . man, if you thought drool was a problem with casserole, you should try chocolate. you know how your mouth waters when you get something yummy in it? yeah. personally, i've had problems with chocolate drool myself, and i'm not someone who has to wear a dishcloth around my neck and listen to people tell me i have a slug crawling down my chin.
this is all to say that when i opened the microwave at work yesterday after someone's lunch had been heated up, i smelled casserole and i immediately wanted to throw up. and then i heard a bunch of marketing guys making iraq jokes, and . . . well, shit.
