Things I don't necessarily expect to see: frum guy getting a pedicure while I was getting mine this afternoon.

Yesterday I got into this whole long coversation with Primera about disability, b/c she kept saying "I'm not like M," who's a girl in the self-contained class at her school. She proceeded to make fun of M and say she has a tiny peanut head, etc. Then she used the word retard. I tried really hard not to flip out on her, b/c I don't think it helps, even though it was making me sick to my stomach. The thing that seemed to get through to her, interestingly, was the concept of loshen hora, b/c she gets it that you don't speak ill of someone b/c it hurts the world. It's hard to teach compassion for those you just don't care about--she was very cavalier, insensitive, about how M might feel about being called stupid, or how much M could understand. She's so contradictory: she's really kind to my friend's kids, who are noticeably developmentally delayed, and she feels very strongly about racism. She was able to articulate that making fun of M means that she doesn't get bullied and said something to the effect that "It shows there's someone crazier than I am." Which was as good an explanation of the appeal of the Other as I've ever heard.

It's a work in progress, processing this disability stuff. Meanwhile Secundo is in a collaborative class this year and gets annoyed that the teachers don't administer the rules fairly (I have some issues w/the behavior system, but anyway). I got a book from Amazon (Looking After Louis) after striking out @ Borders, which had absolutely NOTHING, not even some book I remember Maria Shriver writing re Down Syndrome a couple of years ago. We'll see how he responds to it, since I just got it in the mail this second.