Hi. You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but you are glaring at me and my children right now and seeing as we’re all confined to an itty-bitty tiny space in the ride line, I think I should say a few words to you (on my blog at least).
First of all, I can see that you are irked because we are in the ‘disability line’ of the ride that your angel has been standing in for the last 40 minutes. I get it. You’re tired. Your kid is tired. It’s hot. My kids look totally normal, so why do we get to cut to the front of the line?
The fact that my ‘special kid’ looks normal is a tribute to this disability line. Believe me, you would not want to be standing near us if we had to wait 45 minutes to ride this one minute ride! My daughter (one of my three with disabilities) has a genetic disorder very similar to autism and at three years old cannot stand in line. It may look like she is just a bratty kid throwing a fit when we attempt to do something like stand in a line, but in fact it is a sensory meltdown you would be guaranteed to observe. That meltdown would take us about one hour to get through. If we got through it at all.
Probably, she would go into meltdown mode and not be able to shake it because this theme park has so much sensory stimulation.
That is why we are in the disability line.
For her, at least.
So, why do her siblings get to tag along? Why can’t they stand in the regular line like all the other kids?
My six year old (typical) daughter summed it up perfectly. She calls their disability card the “Special Card” because, as she says, “We’re special and get to jump to the front of the line because of Ana and Grace!”
These siblings spend every day of their life doing damage control for their disabled sisters, fielding question and question about their sisters, standing in humiliation while their sisters meltdown or destroy something out in public, and are ostracized by other children at public playgrounds or museums or events because their sisters are different. They DESERVE a day to be special. Not just a day to be special but a day to enjoy an amusement park with sisters who are NOT melting down, destroying property, or otherwise causing a big scene.
So that, glaring lady, is precisely why we are over in the short line and your children are over in the long line. From the hot and humid place you are standing, it may not be fair even with my explanation, but consider this as my closing thought. You get to leave this park tonight with your typical kid and go back to your life with a typical kid where you never consider what your child can destroy when you walk in a store or someone’s house, where you don’t have to do your own safety-check of playgrounds and parks to make sure your kid won’t die in a very creative fashion, where you don’t go to ten therapy appointments a week and at least one official or unofficial school meeting a week, where you don’t have to search far and wide to find a qualified sitter to watch your children so you and your husband can go out to dinner once a year.
In fact, you probably never think about the things that dominate my life. Savor that. When you see my children rather than glare at me for being in the disability line, thank God for having kids that don’t qualify.