This is a Flavin Story.
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2nd grade, 1973
The 70’s was the same time-frame that I was a kid at Jackson Elementary School in Oak Park, Michigan. It was exactly 1975 that a two-second memory of Diane had embedded itself into my memory. The girl with a severe disability and I made direct eye contact, but one year earlier, she was likely at home, not invited to her local public school.
I was one of the fortunate ones; I had no disabilities. 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 website, and my body had no impairments, inside or out.
Between the ages of 6 and 10, they say, I was “able to understand the viewpoints of others.” And I was “aware that others can have different thoughts.”
I still have a distinct visual memory of Diane that lasted maybe two seconds, and yet that moment has mushroomed into so much more. The more years that have passed, the more my understanding of it expands.
It’s true with every memory. The few seconds that our mind captures a brief comprehension of an event may be remembered for 50 years or more, but the event itself is often 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.
What happened behind Wing 4 of Andrew Jackson Elementary School has less to do with what I visually saw in that moment, and everything to do with what it has come to represent.
I was alone when I left Mrs. Grady’s class and ran out the door to the playground. Recess had just started, and I was racing 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. We played a game called “cream ’em” on the neighbor’s lawn, Mike and I being the youngest. One person would throw the ball straight up, and whoever got grabbed it was chased and tackled by whoever in the group could catch him. “Tag” soon became a game of “catch John and Mike” because we had honed the necessary skills and the usual game inevitably led to the other kids chasing me or Mike around.
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. They were close to a hundred feet tall, separating our playground from the back yards of the houses facing Majestic Street. All the usual structures stood with their time-worn solid steel: an 8-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 momentum would have been deemed “prohibited by law.”
The back of Wing 4, where Diane, a black girl one year older, had walked past me using two Lofstrand crutches, two bent legs, a crooked body, and a big white-toothed smile. Her gait was uneven and labored. A Lofstrand crutch, or elbow crutch, is a type of forearm crutch that supports the weight of the body through the forearms instead of the underarms.
I had seen Diane around the school occasionally, but that was the first time we had made eye contact in close proximity. She, along with other children of all ages with disabilities, went to separate classrooms in Wing 2. Wings 1, 3, and 4 were for typically developing kids.
After bounding out the fourth wing door, I looked up, our eyes met, and her whole face smiled. It had startled me that her eyes were so inviting. I hadn’t expected her face to be appear so joyful. In those two seconds, I also hadn’t expected that she would look like she understood even that we were making eye contact. If I hadn’t been thrown off by all of that, I might have smiled and possibly said “Hi.” Instead, my thoughts froze.
Whatever my observational skills at the time, it looked like she understood the purpose of eye contact, and it was more than a reflexive response people have when they pass by. What prompted me into silence was that it looked like we could have talked like typically-developing kids. I figured it out later that we were both typically-developing kids, one of whom happened to have a severe physical disability.
“Becomes able to understand the viewpoints of others.”
American Psychological Association
My two-second visual memory was Diane’s inviting eyes and big smile. My retrospective, 50-year cumulative memory is the image of myself unable to reply, with the burden of history and dysfunctional social systems that constricted my response like a fat python around a small pig, to say “hi” like I would have to any other kid.
My parents had fostered the quality of paying attention to my surroundings, but I was struck paralyzed and my “6 to 10 year-old” brain couldn’t process what to do with Diane’s typically developing social awareness. I had believed that, because she was housed in Wing 2, she must have been unable to think. Or, as I would have described her then, she was “retarded.” So, I walked past her without a word or a smile.
Soon after, I dreamt about Diane. 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, so actually, we rarely walked.
As I got close 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. They were immediately dark, the sunlight from above not seeping in more than a foot or two into the openings. I had no idea where they led, but I did know that one led to good and the other to evil. I had that inexplicable understanding we sometimes have in dreams where we just know. 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 made the decision, Diane came out of the left door. I don’t remember seeing her clearly, like I had that morning, but I knew it was her. I quickly deduced 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 and had 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 bright and happy face walking past me 50 years ago is alive in my memory.
In scattered and blurry fragments, I remember that she went in and out of Wing 2 and spent her recess on that side of the chain-link fence, away from the children I played with.
And one night, she chased me up the olive green carpeted stairs, presumably intending to drag me back to my fate with evil through door #1.
Why would I dream about Diane symbolizing evil when I had my first authentic exchange with her, however brief?
Like my inability to be fully aware of her discerning eyes in that moment, I couldn’t do what the APA also said I could: “focus on several aspects of a problem.”
And it was a problem.
I had accepted that the authorities at Jackson Elementary isolated Diane and other non-typically developing children because they were so unlike the rest of us. I could see they were in wheel chairs, permanently used Lofstrand crutches, and otherwise appeared different from me. Me and some of my friends would say, “Let’s act retarded,” and then we would mimic Diane’s angled body. 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. Diane included.
That’s where my confusion lied.
I had never met the students in Wing 2, so I was in the dark about their abilities or disabilities. The all-encompassing label–retarded–cemented the illusion that, ultimately, they were all the same: unaware of silliness, humor, spontaneous play, amazement, fun, music, joy, fairness, and at least a basic understanding of words and gestures and emotions, let alone ideas. The notion that we could have been friends was distant, as if she were a leper in 15th century Europe.
They were truly “other” people, and yet Diane saw me and she seemed to know how to “act normal.” Being a generally friendly boy and typically developing, it was clear to me that what I saw in Diane’s face in those two seconds meant that we could have at least been friendly. She was like all the kids I knew on this side of the chain-link fence. Had Diane and the others been included in our classrooms, would she have been much different than any of my classmates.
With new accumulating knowledge, my memory has changed what happened during those two seconds, but at that time, there were too many conflicting and unknown variables. Maybe I could “focus on several aspects of a problem,” but I was oblivious to most of them.
Outside of those two seconds of eye contact, Diane and I had little chance of being friends, or even friendly. I wasn’t “better able to empathize with other people and accept the idea of giving special consideration to those in greater need,” despite the findings of the American Psychological Association. Every system in our 1975 Oak Park community made sure of it:
The chain-link fence was built to isolate her and to free me.
The policies of exclusion were deliberately constructed by old-world educators of that century.
The physical separation of their classrooms were well-signed in the hallways.
The entertainment culture rarely integrated “others” into so-called normal society.
My friends and I thought it was normal to mimic and mock Diane and her peers.
All of it. All of it eclipses our two seconds of eye contact. Empathy and “special consideration” didn’t stand a chance.
Nothing can be done about the reality of our systems during that time, but I will remember the Diane behind Wing 4 at the beginning of recess that one day. I will remember her wide smile, energetic body language, kindness, and her friendliness.
Had there not been a canyon between us assembled by the adults in that school, that district, and perhaps in all public schools (assembled? Or neglected? play with that) 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.
Written April 17, 2022