"I'm impaired!"

It’s one thing to read a work of fiction about a person with autism (i.e., The Curious Incident of the Dog at Nighttime which was very insightful, in fact), and another to read a person’s musing about his mentally retardation. David Sedaris is actually a very gifted person; he has the ability to produce a writing which is engaging, not only unboring but highly entertaining. I call it cerebral humor. And we are talking about the written work of someone who has been licking the light switches in his school and at his home, who counts his steps from his school to his home, and does ritualistic tasks along the way, such as touching the telephone pole at the 314^th step, at exactly the same spot. I didn’t have to read the rest of his litanies of rituals to know I was reading a true to life account of a real, authentic, clinically obsessive compulsive. The fact that his books are brimming with brilliance makes me wonder how he reached this far, from point A to point be, from being considered a problem child by his math teacher, to a bestselling author.

It brings to mind my classmate in grade school, run by nuns and considerably expensive, who was a frequent target of my teacher’s dust chalk filled blackboard eraser, or her chalks, or just about anything she can lay her hands on. It was only when I became a grown up and a lawyer did I realize I had witnessed child abuse, as defined by law. My classmate happens to be branded a bobo, because unlike most of us, he still couldn’t read. Perhaps my teacher was actually frustrated on herself and her inability to make the boy read, and turned her wrath on him for making her look like a bad teacher (he was reputably one of the better teachers in that school). Reading about dyslexia, aphasia, anomia in college made me recall this classmate and grade school and the realization that my bobo classmate could have been suffering from dyslexia when he was young that why he couldn’t read! While he had to leave our school and finished his education from a public school, I heard that he eventually improved and in fact, belonged to the first section, graduated with honors and even became a Chairman of the Sangguniang Kabataan in his barangay!

Thinking about it, perhaps our schools, our classmates, and even ourselves were judgmental, so I suppose, our parents were. For where would we get the idea to brand a classmate as bobo, tanga or engot if we weren’t brainwashed into making personal imputations, as if these people branded and labeled were the ones to blame why they seem to be quite slower than their other classmates. After all, it was out of ignorance that insanity was previously thought to be due to demonic possession, and homosexuality was considered a mental illness. It is this admirable that David Sedaris, despite his sexual preference, has been able to carve a niche for himself as a writer who happens to be gay rather than a gay writer. He was different, perhaps from the day he was born, and refused to give in to the pressure to conform (of course, he can only do so much). He may not have had what some would call a perfect life, there have been a few snags here and there, but he seems to have been able to live his life the way he wanted, picked up himself where he had slipped or splattered himself, became happy for it, and is now sharing his colorful life through his writing. So if you want a really light reading and do not have any chronic jaw injuries, I recommend getting hold of any of his books. Be prepared to get incredulous stares while you’re guffawing by yourself.