Never Walked In High Heels

Last week’s death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver left the country mourning a wonderful woman. I was told about the loss in an email from a friend who then followed the news by saying “What an amazing woman. You will be just as inspirational, if not more, to millions some day, as well.” I know what she was trying to say. I love her for the encouragement she meant to send me. I just couldn’t help but be very frustrated by it.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver boldly started the Special Olympics during a time when there were no such opportunities for persons with conditions such as Downs Syndrome and Autism. This should be praised. Somehow, in the American Public’s mind, the mentally disabled population got transformed into the idea that a Special Olympic athlete could be anyone with any disability, be it physical or mental.

For much of my teenage years I was training as a Paralympic hopeful. The difference between the level of competition between the two is striking. Whereas the Special Olympics takes the attitude that “everyone here is a winner,” most people will come home from the Paralympics without an award. In the latter the competition is fierce, frightening, and very real. So, growing up training on the Great Lakes Navy Base in the middle of January, if a well meaning teacher told the class I was getting ready to participate in the Special Olympics the result was a tornado.

The confusion between the Special Olympics and the Paralympics disturbs me on two levels.  The first is that the latter seems to lack the media machine which the former has. (Or maybe it’s just the fact that the Special Olympics is blessed enough to have the name Kennedy behind it? Either way…) Most Americans are still clueless about what the Paralympics are. The games still seem to stand in the shadow of the Special Olympics. The fact that the confusion still exists is distressing to every Paralympic athlete I have ever known. It would be like telling Tiger Woods that he had to compete in the Pan-African Games when he isn’t African in the first place.

I also feel that the prominence of the Special Olympics has served to create the association in people’s minds that all disabilities are mental disabilities.  I find this consistent fallacy enraging and have done so ever since I was very small. This presumption is, in essence, the sort of mass funneling and insistent misclassification of all persons with disabilities. After being wrongfully shuffled off to special education classrooms and insults from strangers who assume that they know what’s better for me than I do, the association makes me more than a little on edge.

The work of Eunice Kennedy Shriver was brilliantly admirable. I just regret that it has seemed to cause so much miscommunication. For all the good that was done by her efforts, it created a very frustrating response in my own life. By assuming that all persons with disabilities fit into one specific category or could be served by one specific charity, those who thought they knew about the Special Olympics ignored the wealth of diversity and gifts that were right in front of them. Which is, I think, just the opposite of what Eunice Kennedy Shriver intended to do.