Nothing funny about it

I’ve written extensively about Anchor Bay High School and my experiences there in past posts. I was thinking about it today and one of the people I thought of was a boy named Ronnie Decker. Ronnie was one of those kids that got made fun of and was totally clueless about it. He was “a little slow.” He would ask perfectly innocent questions that seemed logical to him, but which brought heavy laughter by those who supposedly had their wits about them.

I thought about Ronnie today because it finally occurred to me that he was a product of special education, a student who was integrated into typical classrooms instead of being sequestered in a special ed room for all the days of his schooling. Ronnie may have been slightly retarded, he may have been autistic, I don’t know. But I asked myself one question- are Matthew and Rebecca going to be treated like Ronnie Decker? Will Matthew be beaten up and ridiculed by the asshole population of junior high school? (And I’m not sorry for using that word, because it’s the only one that fits here.) Will Rebecca be taken advantage of by some smooth talking Lothario who only wants to get in her pants? (Once again, a description that is appropriate.)

I have no answers to these questions and no solutions to these potential situations. And that pisses me off (see preceding paragraph) because I don’t want my kids to go through these things, yet there may be nothing that I can do to prevent them.

Crap.