I found this post that linked to me ... somehow contributing a message I had forward to me. Now, I did forward this story but I by no means wrote it. And the interesting thing was I felt some of the same reservations about the story this guy did. The comments after the story are his and I've included my response to him as well, because he brought up a good point and it's something I don't think we talk about enough. Another one of those things that tend to settle on the edges of invisibility ... and you know I can't leave those alone ...
It’s Not That I’m Hard-Hearted
By billmyers
I received the following chain e-mail from someone the other day:
A Shay Day
What would you do? You make the choice.
Don’t look for a punch line, there isn’t one.
Read it anyway.
My question is: Would you have made the same choice?
At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended.
After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:
“When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?”
The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. “I believe, that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.”
Then he told the following story:
Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, “Do you think they’ll let me play?”
Shay’s father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.
Shay’s father approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, “We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.”
Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. His Father watched with a small tear in his eye and warmth in his heart. The boys saw the father’s joy at his son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.
At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.
However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.
The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the e first baseman’s head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, “Shay, run to first! Run to first!” Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.
Everyone yelled, “Run to second, run to second!” Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball … the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.
All were screaming, “Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay”
Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, “Run to third!
Shay, run to third!”
As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, “Shay, run home! Run home!” Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.
“That day”, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, “the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world”.
Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making his father so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!
AND NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY: We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people hesitate. The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.
If you’re thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you’re probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren’t the “appropriate” ones to receive this type of message.
Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a difference.
We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the “natural order of things.”
So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice:
Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?
A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it’s least fortunate amongst them.
You now have two choices:
1. Delete
2. Forward
May your day, be a Shay Day.
/Marie Starr/
http://www.serendipitythree.blogspot.com
I don’t know if the story is true or not. Regardless, my initial reaction was one of unbridled sentimentality. I was going to forward this little tearjerker on to my friends and family… until I had a chance to think about the tale and its implications. Rigging things to fool someone into thinking they’ve accomplished something when they actually haven’t isn’t a kindness. It’s a cruelty. It robs them of their dignity. It cheats them out of the joy of truly overcoming obstacles and using their abilities to the fullest, whatever those abilities may be. Everyone, except perhaps for those with developmental disabilities so severe they are incapable of performing even the most basic of tasks, has certain abilities and limitations. And everyone deserves the chance to learn what those abilities and limitations truly are, and test themselves against both.What would I have done? If mine was team at bat, I would’ve let Shay play. But I would’ve insisted that the opposing team throw him real pitches. If he did by some chance connect, I’d've wanted the those in the outfield to play just like they would against any other player on the opposing team. And ultimately if Shay had failed I would’ve congratulated him for trying his best, and told him that even the best players strike out.
In other words, I would’ve let Shay wreck our chance at winning for a chance to feel like he truly belonged. Because I would’ve treated him like any other player.
And here is my response:
Marie Starr says:
August 21st, 2007 at 2:42 am
You know, it’s funny … I have no idea who you are or why this was attributed to me, as it was also a forward I received, and, oddly enough, I had the same mixed reactions you did, to a certain point.
However, I have been fortunate enough to be involved with people of differing abilities throughout my lifetime. Most of my family worked at a camp for children with disabilities and I went there every summer from the time I was five on. And while I agree that the best possible thing you can do for anyone, regardless of their ability, is to treat them the same way you would treat anyone else, and that a consistent feeling condescension is one of the most damaging things that can happen to anyone, the point of this particular story was that these other boys who really did want to win, that all these people involved and invested in this concept of winning, put this ambition aside because they decided that this boy’s happiness was more important to them at that moment. It also suggests that this interaction, that this moment, and the feeling that was shared by these people in this moment perhaps prompted them to continue to examine their values throughout their lives and make similar choices in the future.
With this particular situation, in the story that is set up, whether it is true or not, Shay would never have had the ability to make a home run if the other team had allowed him to play but not thrown him easy pitches and let the ball go when they could have struck him out. It would have been beyond his abilities even if he had tried every day of his life. And because of this fact, I think the decision they made was the right one.
Because I have seen the look on children’s faces when we have found ways to make it so they could do anything at the camp we worked at that they could do at any other camp, even if that meant we grabbed them out of their wheelchairs and ran them around the bases ourselves while the other team good-naturedly fumbled the ball a bit or if it meant parts of the play had nothing to do with the script or were unintelligible to everyone but the other actors who’d actually seen the script.
There is a balance that can be found between recognizing each others’ limitations and deciding that people are more important than following all the rules or winning or getting done quickly or cleanly or whatever our motivation may be. The camp I worked at was set up so that kids who could not go to other camps, kids who had too many special needs, who needed one-on-one supervision and assistance 24/7, who had trakes or catheters or limited mobility, or who such severe delays that they really could not keep up with other kids had somewhere to go where they could be just like any other kid. And the focus was on making it a regular camping experience.
It is rugged, there are dirt road full of rocks and potholes, there are ravines and a waterfront you have to hike a mile down to get to, there are basic boy scout tents out in the middle of the wilderness, and there are all the camp things you get anywhere else: bon-fires and talent shows, camp songs and obstacle courses, archery and rifle range, canoeing and hiking … but there are also several nurses on duty and swings to get kids with limited mobility in the pool and shower chairs in the showers and ramps to get into all the buildings because these things are necessary tools and the kids know this, we all know this. I guess in a way I feel like we can’t expect Shay to make a home-run without assistance anymore than we can expect someone in a wheelchair to be able to get in a building by themselves without a ramp. And I guess, in the end, I feel it is that bliss he felt, that bliss he shared that was the important part of this story.
I think the crux of why I passed this story on was the point the father made when he said, “I believe, that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.”
Life is full of balances and no one value or decision of what is right and wrong can be applied to every situation without taking the facts into account, without recognizing the reality of our own and other’s lives and the limitations we all have to work with, some of which can be overcome and some of which cannot not matter how hard one may try, no matter how hard one may wish for it to be different.
I know I have learned some of the most important lessons in my life from people who have been classified as disabled. Lessons I might not have learned had I not seen people with disabilities as being as wise and able and deserving of respect and attention as any other individual. I know I have been frustrated by, and felt the frustration of friend who have been treated as inferior, as stupid, as incapable and unworthy based on people’s assumptions about their disabilities or due to people’s impatience with taking the time to understand those who are not always easiest to understand. And I know how important it has been to so many people to find a place where they are treated as equals, where they are expected to try just as hard as anybody else, but where they are also accepted and appreciated as being enough exactly as they are.
It is a difficult balance we speak of here, but so much of our life is. All we can do is our best again and again. And our best changes based on any number of circumstances. Our best is not the same when we are young as when we’re old, or when we’re healthy compared to when we’re sick, or whether we are able-bodied or disabled in some way … and I think we need to understand this about ourselves and about others. And anything that reminds us that people are more important than anything else (winning, profit, money, success, whatever) is something I’m willing to pass on.
It’s Not That I’m Hard-Hearted
By billmyers
I received the following chain e-mail from someone the other day:
A Shay Day
What would you do? You make the choice.
Don’t look for a punch line, there isn’t one.
Read it anyway.
My question is: Would you have made the same choice?
At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended.
After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:
“When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?”
The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. “I believe, that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.”
Then he told the following story:
Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, “Do you think they’ll let me play?”
Shay’s father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.
Shay’s father approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, “We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.”
Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. His Father watched with a small tear in his eye and warmth in his heart. The boys saw the father’s joy at his son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.
At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.
However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.
The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the e first baseman’s head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, “Shay, run to first! Run to first!” Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.
Everyone yelled, “Run to second, run to second!” Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball … the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.
All were screaming, “Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay”
Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, “Run to third!
Shay, run to third!”
As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, “Shay, run home! Run home!” Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.
“That day”, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, “the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world”.
Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making his father so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!
AND NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY: We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people hesitate. The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.
If you’re thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you’re probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren’t the “appropriate” ones to receive this type of message.
Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a difference.
We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the “natural order of things.”
So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice:
Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?
A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it’s least fortunate amongst them.
You now have two choices:
1. Delete
2. Forward
May your day, be a Shay Day.
/Marie Starr/
http://www.serendipitythree.blogspot.com
I don’t know if the story is true or not. Regardless, my initial reaction was one of unbridled sentimentality. I was going to forward this little tearjerker on to my friends and family… until I had a chance to think about the tale and its implications. Rigging things to fool someone into thinking they’ve accomplished something when they actually haven’t isn’t a kindness. It’s a cruelty. It robs them of their dignity. It cheats them out of the joy of truly overcoming obstacles and using their abilities to the fullest, whatever those abilities may be. Everyone, except perhaps for those with developmental disabilities so severe they are incapable of performing even the most basic of tasks, has certain abilities and limitations. And everyone deserves the chance to learn what those abilities and limitations truly are, and test themselves against both.What would I have done? If mine was team at bat, I would’ve let Shay play. But I would’ve insisted that the opposing team throw him real pitches. If he did by some chance connect, I’d've wanted the those in the outfield to play just like they would against any other player on the opposing team. And ultimately if Shay had failed I would’ve congratulated him for trying his best, and told him that even the best players strike out.
In other words, I would’ve let Shay wreck our chance at winning for a chance to feel like he truly belonged. Because I would’ve treated him like any other player.
And here is my response:
Marie Starr says:
August 21st, 2007 at 2:42 am
You know, it’s funny … I have no idea who you are or why this was attributed to me, as it was also a forward I received, and, oddly enough, I had the same mixed reactions you did, to a certain point.
However, I have been fortunate enough to be involved with people of differing abilities throughout my lifetime. Most of my family worked at a camp for children with disabilities and I went there every summer from the time I was five on. And while I agree that the best possible thing you can do for anyone, regardless of their ability, is to treat them the same way you would treat anyone else, and that a consistent feeling condescension is one of the most damaging things that can happen to anyone, the point of this particular story was that these other boys who really did want to win, that all these people involved and invested in this concept of winning, put this ambition aside because they decided that this boy’s happiness was more important to them at that moment. It also suggests that this interaction, that this moment, and the feeling that was shared by these people in this moment perhaps prompted them to continue to examine their values throughout their lives and make similar choices in the future.
With this particular situation, in the story that is set up, whether it is true or not, Shay would never have had the ability to make a home run if the other team had allowed him to play but not thrown him easy pitches and let the ball go when they could have struck him out. It would have been beyond his abilities even if he had tried every day of his life. And because of this fact, I think the decision they made was the right one.
Because I have seen the look on children’s faces when we have found ways to make it so they could do anything at the camp we worked at that they could do at any other camp, even if that meant we grabbed them out of their wheelchairs and ran them around the bases ourselves while the other team good-naturedly fumbled the ball a bit or if it meant parts of the play had nothing to do with the script or were unintelligible to everyone but the other actors who’d actually seen the script.
There is a balance that can be found between recognizing each others’ limitations and deciding that people are more important than following all the rules or winning or getting done quickly or cleanly or whatever our motivation may be. The camp I worked at was set up so that kids who could not go to other camps, kids who had too many special needs, who needed one-on-one supervision and assistance 24/7, who had trakes or catheters or limited mobility, or who such severe delays that they really could not keep up with other kids had somewhere to go where they could be just like any other kid. And the focus was on making it a regular camping experience.
It is rugged, there are dirt road full of rocks and potholes, there are ravines and a waterfront you have to hike a mile down to get to, there are basic boy scout tents out in the middle of the wilderness, and there are all the camp things you get anywhere else: bon-fires and talent shows, camp songs and obstacle courses, archery and rifle range, canoeing and hiking … but there are also several nurses on duty and swings to get kids with limited mobility in the pool and shower chairs in the showers and ramps to get into all the buildings because these things are necessary tools and the kids know this, we all know this. I guess in a way I feel like we can’t expect Shay to make a home-run without assistance anymore than we can expect someone in a wheelchair to be able to get in a building by themselves without a ramp. And I guess, in the end, I feel it is that bliss he felt, that bliss he shared that was the important part of this story.
I think the crux of why I passed this story on was the point the father made when he said, “I believe, that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.”
Life is full of balances and no one value or decision of what is right and wrong can be applied to every situation without taking the facts into account, without recognizing the reality of our own and other’s lives and the limitations we all have to work with, some of which can be overcome and some of which cannot not matter how hard one may try, no matter how hard one may wish for it to be different.
I know I have learned some of the most important lessons in my life from people who have been classified as disabled. Lessons I might not have learned had I not seen people with disabilities as being as wise and able and deserving of respect and attention as any other individual. I know I have been frustrated by, and felt the frustration of friend who have been treated as inferior, as stupid, as incapable and unworthy based on people’s assumptions about their disabilities or due to people’s impatience with taking the time to understand those who are not always easiest to understand. And I know how important it has been to so many people to find a place where they are treated as equals, where they are expected to try just as hard as anybody else, but where they are also accepted and appreciated as being enough exactly as they are.
It is a difficult balance we speak of here, but so much of our life is. All we can do is our best again and again. And our best changes based on any number of circumstances. Our best is not the same when we are young as when we’re old, or when we’re healthy compared to when we’re sick, or whether we are able-bodied or disabled in some way … and I think we need to understand this about ourselves and about others. And anything that reminds us that people are more important than anything else (winning, profit, money, success, whatever) is something I’m willing to pass on.
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