From “My Right Wing Dad .net,” an oddly compelling blog of right-wing email forwards, a poem called “When I Whine.” I think Jerry Lewis would find this poem beautiful.
Today, upon a bus, I saw a girl with golden hair
I looked at her and sighed and wished I was as fair.
When suddenly she rose to leave,
I saw her hobble down the aisle.
She had one leg and used a crutch
But as she passed, she passed a smile.
Oh, God, forgive me when I whine
I have 2 legs, the world is mine.
And that’s just the first stanza. The poet hasn’t even gotten to the blind kid who thanks sighted people for being willing to talk to a person like him. Go read, if you dare.
Ironically, this poem, all about how horrible these relatively minor and apparently well-compensated* physical problems are, was probably sent by someone who also thinks that abortion for fetal defects should be illegal because, after all, life with, say, trisomy 18 or Tay-Sachs wouldn’t really be _that_ bad would it? Yet here he or she reveals his/her horror at any “defect”. Not just condescending, but hypocritical as well.
*The narrator doesn’t even notice the problem until later, i.e. when the blind kid tells him/her, so either the narrator is hopelessly oblivious or the objects of the poem have found compensation mechanisms. Or both.
Isn’t this a rather old poem? I think I might have read it in grade school? I realize how offensive it is, but doesn’t it belong in some historical context? Even its original purpose wasn’t, exactly, to review disabilities so much as to get people to look on the bright side. Does anyone know of any contemporaneous uses? Not sure it’s worth the effort to analyze, unlike the “I thought I was going to Italy and ended up in Holland” essay that is shoved in the faces of every parent of every child with any kind of physical or mental impairment. I would really like to hear views of the disabled on that essay.
As a disabled person, all I have to say for the poem is “meh”. I find much more condescension in Ampersand’s post. “I think Jerry Lewis would find this poem beautiful” is a much more offensive statement to me than anything written in that poem.
Ferg, why is that statement offensive to you?
I am really surprised that the author of this piece never stopped for a moment to wonder then–what do those people I’m glad not to be have to be thankful for? I don’t really see how this piece could be inspiring if one stops to think about it. I’m sure glad I’m not that guy isn’t an uplifting message so much as patting oneself on the back for things not in your control.
“Not sure it’s worth the effort to analyze, unlike the “I thought I was going to Italy and ended up in Holland” essay that is shoved in the faces of every parent of every child with any kind of physical or mental impairment. ”
I’ve never heard of this… do you have a link to it?
Pheer my 31337 Google skillz.
Welcome to Holland
Jerry Lewis would find this sort of thing beautiful. He says similar things all the time during his telethon — it’s really the central message other than “send us your money.”
When I find this poem or similar ones in my email inbox, I’m utterly mystified as to what the sender thinks I, a severely disabled individual, am supposed to think about them. This poem proposes no solution, assistance or awareness, other than smug superiority.
I’m deeply ambivalent about the “Welcome to Holland” essay. It’s aimed at parents of disabled children and, in that sense, does say something a bit revolutionary, if unsophisticated, that doesn’t get thrown around much. That is, “this will be different, but not all bad.” That stands in stark contrast from the message that still predominates that disabled children will ruin your life, have no worthwhile life themselves, and would be better aborted. Deeply ironic though, that Holland is where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal. As a disabled person, metaphorically speaking, the switch from a trip to Italy to one in Holland would be fairly alarming.
Dianne, I realize you’ve got an issue that’s important to you there, but your comment is a bit obnoxious, imo.
Kay: I’m sorry if my comment came out obnoxious, but I’m afraid I can’t retract it. Those people who go around babbling about the “genocide” of Down’s syndrome fetuses and how horrible pro-choicers are that they would allow women to obtain abortions for any reason, including because they don’t want a child who might have the same disability as you? They aren’t doing it out of love for you. Yes, some disability activists take a mixed position such as “I don’t have a problem with someone saying ‘I don’t want a baby’ just with people saying, ‘I don’t want this baby'” and so on, but the run of the mill anti-choicer is just using your existential fear to further their own ends. Listen to them when they think that there are no disabled people in the room. The comments can become… informative. Not to try to change your opinion, just…don’t be disappointed when the same people who go on and on about the preciousness of all life and how horrible it would be if any disabled fetus were aborted also refuse to fund even the simplest forms of disability aid such as physical or educational therapy or health care and basically refuse to take any interest in already born people with disabilities. Or without disabilities for that matter.
I’m aware of the inconsistent support antichoicers have for disability issues. While the specifics differ, it’s not substantially different from the inconsistent support my nondisabled liberal friends offer on disability issues.
What bothers me about your initial comment is, firstly, that it’s just not true that antichoicers have any corner on insensitive platitudes and beliefs like in this poem. But I’m also bothered by your word choice — the “relatively minor” disabilities versus Tay Sachs/etc. dichotomy. (Where is not being able to see or only having one leg considered a “minor” thing? I’d love to live in that world.) Perhaps you’re trying to differentiate between conditions that are fatal at birth and those that are not, but your language is the same that is routinely used to excuse surgery on Ashley while telling someone like me I’m “not really disabled” because I communicate well online. Or claim Terry Schiavo has nothing in common with disability rights activists because her impairments crossed some illusive line beyond personhood. The line for who disability issues and rights apply to gets conveniently moved by a lot of folks who don’t identify as disabled, and it’s a typical way disabled people’s voices are then discounted as irrelevant — sometimes because we’re too disabled, sometimes not disabled enough. It’s a tactic used by both the political right and left.
Not a link, the whole thing, it’s not too long:
“Welcome to Holland”
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with
a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique
experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like
this:
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous
vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make
your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The
gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian.
It’s all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You
pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”
“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for
Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going
to Italy.”
But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in
Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible,
disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease.
It’s just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn
a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you never would have met.
It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy
than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch
your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills…and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and
they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.
And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was
supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away…because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.
But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to
Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very
lovely things … about Holland.
– Emily Pearl Kingsley
I don’t know why I’ve always been a bit turned off by this. I can’t explain it and I do know parents of disabled children who feel like it crystallizes their experience very well.
But I’m also bothered by your word choice — the “relatively minor” disabilities versus Tay Sachs/etc. dichotomy. (Where is not being able to see or only having one leg considered a “minor” thing? I’d love to live in that world.)
Yeah, you’re right that did come out badly. I was trying to differentiate between things that kill people painfully very early on versus those that can be compensated for. I doubt you really want to live in the world where being unable to see or having one leg is a relatively minor thing. I emphasize “relatively” because, of course, lacking a basic sense or missing a limb is not a minor problem in any absolute sense and I don’t mean to minimize or deny the level of suffering that these conditions cause or claim that people who have such conditions and have compensated for them haven’t done a lot of work, etc.
But there are worse ways in which people’s bodies can fail. Such as having a disease that makes waste products build up in your brain which kills you painfully over months to years (i.e. lipid storage diseases such as Tay-Sachs or Niemann-Pick) or having two perfectly good legs but a disease that has destroyed the nerves controlling them and therefore being unable to walk and knowing that the same disease will continue to destroy your nerves until you can no longer breath (ALS) or a cancer that is gradually pressing your brain down into your spinal canal or…Feeling fortunate yet? Lucky to have working neurons, no cancers in your brain, etc? Thought not. Which is why the poem strikes me as being useless as well as insulting: knowing that other people have problems, some of which may be worse than yours, doesn’t really make anyone feel better.
The line for who disability issues and rights apply to gets conveniently moved by a lot of folks who don’t identify as disabled,
Eh, it’s not really a “line” anyway as much as a gray area. As a trivial example, I’m very nearsighted. If my vision were not corrected I might be considered legally blind. However, glasses correct my vision to 20/20. So is “Dianne” disabled but “Dianne+glasses” not (or at least not in terms of vision, there being other issues)? Most people don’t consider correctable nearsightedness, however severe when uncorrected, to be a disability, but they do consider hearing problems, even when correctable, to be so. Not sure what that means, except that maybe “disability” like “race” and “gender” has a social construct element.
I doubt you really want to live in the world where being unable to see or having one leg is a relatively minor thing.
I meant what I said, though I’ll clarify: I want to live in a world where missing limbs and blindness and wheelchairs are not seen seen as utter tragedies, where a stranger or acquaintance might say “You have an interesting life” instead of saying “I’d kill myself if I had to live like you.” I like to be in that world where I didn’t spend my day in public mediating other people’s discomfort, fear and prejudice.
I don’t know how to respond to the rest of comment #12. You seem to be using the poem’s sensibilities to argue against the poem’s sensibilities. And you persist in discussing disability in almost completely medical/physical terms, when most of what I am trying to discuss is the social condition of disability.
I do agree with you that it’s pointless to engage in the Oppression Olympics of which impairments are worst. And I agree there’s no strict “line” between disabled and nondisabled. I wish people wouldn’t persist in drawing it.
I want to live in a world where missing limbs and blindness and wheelchairs are not seen seen as utter tragedies, where a stranger or acquaintance might say “You have an interesting life” instead of saying “I’d kill myself if I had to live like you.”
Me too, although I’d settle for acquaintances saying “that must be a nuisance”. Some combination of social change and technical improvements (making all prosthetics as effective and unobtrusive as glasses, for example) might get there. Eventually. I think on my more optimistic days.
Are there really people who think suicide is preferable to a wheelchair? How does this reconcile with the people who think that disabled people get all the breaks (i.e. the good parking places)?
Are there really people who think suicide is preferable to a wheelchair?
Yep. I’ve used a chair for all mobility for about 24 years, and total strangers have gone out of their way to tap me on the shoulder and tell me my life would drive them to suicide. The past two years I’ve used a vent as well, and that gets some serious reactions too, but most of my experience predates the vent.
How does this reconcile with the people who think that disabled people get all the breaks (i.e. the good parking places)?
Well, it doesn’t, but then logic isn’t a high priority, I guess.
Easy: they’re probably not the same people.
Sorrow looks back,
Worry looks around,
Faith looks up.
unsurprisingly none of them look forward, so they always fall off the same damn cliffs. every. single. time.