Damon | Oak Park, Michigan | 1975-1981

During the 70’s, kids under 10 could leave the house on a summer morning and wander anywhere on bike or foot within a mile or so “until the streetlights came on.” My friends and I went back and forth from each other’s houses or to a school or park. We had snowball fights, knocked on strangers’ doors and ran, and on occasion, threw perfect throwing apples at cars traveling on Nine Mile Road.

We had good arms, too. Between Mike, Bird, and myself, we’d load up our left hand with three or four, had one in our throwing hand, and launched them all from about 100 feet, usually hitting a car waiting at the red light at Republic multiple times. Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! All in quick succession, it filled our hearts with adrenaline. We didn’t wait around for a response, as the percussion of sheet metal was our joy. We ran through a tall set of bushes, made our way across the continuous, non-fenced backyards of seven or eight houses, and dipped back out the other side of the block in about 20 seconds. By the time the driver waited for the light to change, we were just three kids kicking around the neighborhood, nowhere near Nine Mile Road. Our education about how to behave without adult supervision was not consistent with any of our parents’ expectations. They’d have been horrified to know we did shit like that.

In the summers and some weekends, we walked all over the neighborhood. Rarely traveling more than 12 or so blocks, we crossed paths with all manner of people. We had enough big brothers that we didn’t have to worry about bullies, so we were about as carefree as a kid could be. But there was no shortage of other people walking the neighborhood that we didn’t understand.

There was Ken, a lanky man whose only impairment was obvious: he had no left arm. He was in his 60’s, maybe older, and wore a tweed jacket that hung from bony shoulders as if on a hanger. He dressed the same regardless of the weather. Out of his right sleeve hung a rubber hand with the fingers curled up like it were formed to knock on a door. By the way it dangled, we could tell that its only function was to hang at the right length to pose as a hand.

Occasionally we’d run into him on his walks, and he’d stop and chat with us. A cigarette seemed to be a fixture in his good hand, which created permanent tobacco stains. He would put his cigarette in his mouth and give us tips on how to wind up and pitch a ball, sometimes using the ball we were carrying to the park. We could tell that in his day he had played baseball by the way he mimicked pitching. “Don’t talk to strangers” came up as a joke among us, but eventually, Ken became familiar; at some point we stopped wondering what his intentions were. I asked my brothers if they remembered Ken, and they both remembered him similarly. Steve, who is four years older, said “There were reports of something bad with children, which I think was bullshit, people imagining stuff because he hung out at the ballparks. I just think he was lonely and liked baseball.” I remember Ken the same way. As for his rubber hand, we never asked, nor did he explain.

There was Gary, who I’ve since surmised lived with cerebral palsy. He toured the neighborhood riding a yellow Schwinn three-wheeler with a big metal meshed basket in the back that sometimes had a bag of groceries or a couple gallons of milk. Guessing now, he was a young adult in his early 20’s. Or maybe he was in high school, but since public schools resisted or denied people with disabilities, he may have been homeschooled or went to a private school. He’d pass by riding his bike in the street and smiling wide, saliva spilling from his mouth, and uttering what were probably full sentences in his head. All we heard was him grunting and efforts to articulate words. One time we had stopped long enough for Gary to get his sentences out. It was laborious, and we didn’t know anything about his condition, his intelligence level, or anything meaningful except that, like Ken, he had a kind and friendly disposition. Eventually we learned to keep it simple and say, “Hi, Gary,” and keep moving.

There was “Crazy Lady,” who was a short, olive-skinned older woman who walked those same streets, talking to herself. We’d cross the street to avoid her, but as we passed on the other side, her volume increased and her monotonous mumbling took on a more argumentative tone, or so it seemed. She swore and barked out her irritation. In retrospect, and again I can only guess, maybe she had Tourette’s syndrome and suffered from mental illness. Like Gary, we had no language for her behavior, and we had no idea what to make of her. When we were far enough away, we mimicked her, too. People told horror stories about her, saying that she had committed heinous and violent crimes, but like Ken, it was almost certainly gossip and hearsay.

Then there was a boy about our age named Damon. He lived with his family across the street from Roosevelt Park. He often pushed his way into our ball games, or tried anyway. Living across from the park, he could stand on his porch and see picnickers, baseball games, kids playing tag, dogs running around, and frisbees flying. He probably saw me, my brothers, and friends walking with our mitts and bats, or a Wiffle bat or two, fast-walking and talking and deciding on teams.

Damon had Downs syndrome, and one thing that stood out is that we all believed he wouldn’t live past his teen years. I remember looking at him and thinking, He could die right now. He was bigger and more aggressive than me, so I stayed out of his way. He was too much of a mystery, seemingly unafraid of physical conflict, and somewhat imposing next to my smaller body.

I don’t remember a time that Damon didn’t ask to join in our games, no matter the sport. If he was there, he’d ask. We always tried to persuade him that it was best if he didn’t play with us, but he rarely, if ever, conceded and walked away. I can’t be sure how other kids treated him, but because Damon’s older brother Brian and my oldest brother Paul were somewhat friends, we tried a little harder to include Damon than we actually wanted. Plus, when we tried to deny him, he could quickly get frustrated and lose his temper, so the path of least resistance meant we usually included him.

Damon was round and hefty. Despite being 12 or 13 years old, and his family being mostly blond, he had black hair and an occasional gray strand or two. He stuttered: “C-c-can I play?” We had no idea how smart Damon was or wasn’t, but we couldn’t get away with telling him, “I think I hear your brother calling you.” And then, “You should go probably go see what they want.” Or we’d try logic and say, “Sorry, man, we’ve got even teams. If you can find another player, then you can play.” We knew he wouldn’t find anyone because if they were around, they’d already be playing. We’d try the same excuse even when we did have even teams, hoping he might not figure it out. He’d start counting players with his index finger to see if we did have even teams. “Oh, shit. Here we go.” 

After he finished, he might give us the finger with all his other fingers tightly packed together, and stammer, “F-f-fuck you. Just let me hit.” Regardless our response, sometimes Damon would step forward and reach for the bat. Whoever had it would hand it over, and suddenly, he was in for at least a game. 

Sadly, the only Damon we ever got to know was the stuttering “fuck you” Damon who made us (me, anyway) uncomfortable if only for the mythical fact that he could die at any moment and, importantly, he looked different from anyone that any of us knew, and we never understood why.

My mom told us “a mongoloid.” I don’t know if she knew the term Downs syndrome, but she was likely aware that he had a genetic disorder caused by the presence of an extra copy of chromosome 21. It’s possible she knew all of that and more, but since it was the term that America’s medical community used in the late 1970s, she used it. Mom was as conscientious and decent a person as they came; had my mother known then how sickening that term is now, we would have known, too, and she never would have said the word.

With a beer in his hand and family all around, Damon celebrated his 60th birthday in 2024, and continues to thrive.

^ ^ ^

Diane | Oak Park, Michigan | 1975

In the 1970’s, I was a kid at Jackson Elementary School in Oak Park, Michigan. Behind the fourth wing, I made eye-contact with Diane, a girl with a serious disability. It was in 1975, the first year that school districts were legally obligated by the federal government to provide “free and appropriate education” for every child, regardless of ability. If it had been one year earlier, more than likely, Diane would have been prohibited from attending Jackson Elementary and instead educated at home or placed in an overcrowded and underfunded residential facility, called either “state schools” or “state hospitals.”

I ran in field day races, won flag football and baseball championships, played rummy and Monopoly, and learned my times tables in Mrs. Grady’s fourth grade class. My brain had developed in step with typical cognitive and social skills, according to the American Psychological Association (APA) website. Between the ages of 6 and 10, they say I was “able to understand the viewpoints of others” and “aware that others can have different thoughts.”

I have a distinct visual memory of Diane that lasted two or three seconds, and since that moment it has come to mean so much. The more years that have passed, the more my understanding of it expands, which is true with every memory. The few seconds that our minds capture an event may be remembered for 50 years or more, but the event itself is sometimes the least significant part. The event itself stands as a thumbnail of what was happening all around it, particularly if those moments took place when we understood so little, as was the case for me at the age of nine in 1975.

On that day, recess had just started, and I was hurrying to the usual spot to meet other kids for the daily game of “catch John and Mike.” Mike and I both had several active, older brothers who undoubtedly honed our athleticism. After dark, we played a game called “cream ’em” on the neighbor’s lawn. The idea was that one person would throw the ball straight up, and whoever ended up with it was chased and tackled by whoever could catch him. Playing cream ’em with brothers and friends older than Mike and I was perfect training for playing tag with a bunch of other little kids, so it soon became a game of “catch John and Mike.”

The enormous playground was covered with wood chips that had been repurposed from local tree cuttings by the City of Oak Park. It wasn’t uncommon to get stabbed by sticks that made it through the chipper with dagger-like ends. Up a slight incline, dozens of great oak trees stood opposite the school. All the usual structures stood with their time-worn solid steel: an eight-seat swing set, a tall slide with a hump in the middle, and a merry-go-round that was so heavy it took three or four of us little ones toiling in concert to get it going. By modern safety standards, once these things got going around, the weight and subsequent momentum that was produced would have been deemed “prohibited by law.”

On my way out to recess that day, Diane, a Black girl one year older, walked past me using two Lofstrand crutches that helped her support herself on two bent legs, a crooked body, and a big, white-toothed smile. I had seen Diane around the school occasionally, but that was the first time we made eye contact in close proximity. She, along with other children of all grade levels with disabilities, went to separate classrooms in Wing 2. Wings 1, 3, and 4 were for typically developing kids. After bounding out the door and down a couple of steps, I looked up, our eyes met, and her whole face smiled. I was surprised that her eyes seemed inviting and friendly. Whatever my observational skills at the time, I noticed it was more than a reflexive response that people have when they pass by. I learned later that intellectually, we both were typically developing kids, and she happened to have a serious physical disability.

While my two-second memory was of Diane’s eyes and smile, my retrospective, 50-year cumulative memory remembers myself unable to reply, with the invisible burden of dysfunctional social systems that constricted a response like a fat python around a small pig. My parents had taught me to pay attention to my surroundings, but I was paralyzed and couldn’t process what to do with Diane’s apparent awareness. I had believed that, because she was contained in Wing 2, she must have been unable to think. Or, as I would have said then, she was “retarded.”

So, I walked past her without a word or a smile. As an adult, I learned that, had she not had the disability, she might never have been there. The Ferndale School District segregated black kids K through 6 at Grant School, so my school was under 90% white. She was there because, while the school district was unwilling to use federal funds (available the 1964 Civil Rights Act) to bus Black kids to my school, they were willing to bus students with disabilities to my school, Jackson Elementary. Being both a person of color and a kid with a serious disability, Diane was unfamiliar to me in at least those two ways. Soon after the two-second moment, I dreamt about her. It’s the earliest dream that I remember. I’m sure my brain was trying to make sense the day’s two-second event.

In the dream, I was walking toward Oak Park Park, a huge public space with two baseball fields, an ice rink, a significant wooded area, a full-sized pool, concession stands, and several playgrounds. I had played little league baseball and flag football there, so it’s no surprise that that was the direction my dream led me, but it was a couple miles away, and in the Motor City, few people walked more than a half mile unless they had to.

As I got closer to the park, in front of an abstract version of the Oak Park police station, I saw a stairway that went into the ground. No signs, no railings, no apparent reason, but it did have the same carpet as my home: older and worn olive green shag carpet consistent with the times and the income of our household.

I walked down to the bottom of the stairwell to find two doorways without doors. The sunlight from above didn’t seep in more than a foot or two into the openings, creating two voids of darkness. I had no idea where they led, but I had that inexplicable understanding we sometimes have in dreams where we just know. What I did know was that one led to good and the other to evil. I also knew that I had to choose one of the two doorways, enter, and my fate would be determined. It was the right choice, or it was the wrong one.

Before I could make the decision, Diane came out of the left doorway. I don’t remember seeing her clearly, like I had that morning, but I knew it was her. I understood that she came out of the evil doorway, so I turned around, and tried to run back up the stairs to safety. My feet felt like they were made of lead that deadened my legs. I couldn’t escape. I made it three or four stairs, dreading that Diane would catch me. And then I awoke with a start.

—

The two seconds of Diane’s spirit walked past me 50 years ago, and it’s alive in my memory.

In scattered and blurry fragments, I remember seeing her go in and out of Wing 2 and spending her recess on that side of the chain-link fence.

And one night, she chased me up the familiar olive-green carpeted stairs, presumably intending to drag me back to my fate with evil through door #1.

Why did I dream about Diane symbolizing evil when I had had my first authentic exchange with her, however brief? Was this how my childhood mind processed unexplained human behavior? I didn’t know enough to question the authorities at Jackson Elementary for isolating Diane and other non-typically developing children. I could see they were in wheelchairs or permanently attached to Lofstrand crutches, and that they otherwise appeared different from me. Gary’s mysterious cerebral palsy and Diane’s still unnamed impairment produced similar physical motions, of which me and some of my friends mimicked their angled bodies and said, “Let’s act retarded.” In 1975, that word was normal and accepted language, and, importantly, it was all-encompassing. It meant that the kids who were administratively socked away in Wing 2 may or may not have had a physical disability, but it was a foregone conclusion that they couldn’t think very well because we never interacted. How would we know?

I was in the dark about their abilities or disabilities. The all-encompassing R-word label cemented the illusion that they were all the same: unaware of silliness, humor, amazement, music, joy, fairness, and a basic understanding of words and gestures and emotions, let alone ideas. Maybe the had no souls or identity. The notion that we could have been friends not accessible. They were “other” people, and yet, in those two seconds, Diane saw me. Being a friendly boy, it was clear to me that what I saw in Diane’s face meant that we could have been friendly with each other. Not that I could have articulated that in 1975, but had Diane and the others been included in our classrooms, would she have been much different than any of my classmates?

With the accumulating knowledge, my memory had changed what happened during those two seconds. Outside of those two seconds, all around us, from the School Board to Washington, DC, Diane and I had little chance of being friends. I couldn’t “empathize or give special consideration to those who were different than me,” as the APA says, because every system in the community made sure of it:

The chain-link fence was built to isolate Diane and to free me.

The physical separation of their classrooms was well-signed in the hallways.

My friends and I thought it was normal to mimic and mock Diane and her peers.

The entertainment culture rarely integrated “others” into the rest of society.

The policies of exclusion were constructed by old-world educators of that century.

Only by federal mandate were districts compelled to educate both typically and non-typically developing children.

All of it eclipsed the two seconds of eye contact that connected me and Diane 50 or so years before.

Nothing can be done about the reality of our systems during the 1970’s, but remnants of unenlightened social structures were evident. Who knows how it might have shaped the view of millions of school kids if they had been in the same educational space with Diane?

I will remember the Diane behind Wing 4 at the beginning of recess that day. I will remember her smile, energetic body language, and friendliness. Had there not been a pre-assembled canyon between us built by the adults in that school, that district, and perhaps in all public schools across America, I might have had hours, days, weeks, or possibly years of memories with Diane, whatever our relationship.

Decades later, I will settle for those two seconds.