Years ago I had a now long dead shipmate that stuttered.

. It wasn't a little one, it was a classic stammer and a very serious speech impediment. Interestingly enough, it disappeared when push turned into shove. In any kind of an emergency or near emergency he spoke as clear as anyone else, possibly clearer.

He was popular out here and pretty good at his trade and I worked under him for a couple of years until the bottle got ahold of him, he got canned and then he drank himself to death.

He's been dead and gone for fifteen years and I still miss him in a way because he was a real character

He was well liked to the point where the guys out here never referred to his teriffic stammer as anything else but an 'accent'. It was a rare act of special kindness seldom shown in a world where people call things pretty much exactly what they are.

One day he looked at me and told me that he thought it was pretty neat the guys covered for him, but tht truth is he stuttered.

Over the years I have known a number of Down's Syndrone people and to tell you the truth I have never once met a person with this affliction that I didn't like and enjoy the company of.

Almost every single one of them had more decency and kindness in them than most of the rest of the human race and I look at the affliction as a very mixed blessing.

The kindness and social grace that I have seen from Down's people has floored me at times and the simplicity with the way they look at things can be humbling.

I was in Ketchikan, Alaska one day talking with a Down's person one day and it was a gloomy day and raining like it does a lot there. It's the rain capital of Alaska.

"Don't you get depressed in this rainy weather," I asked her.

"No, I get wet," she replied, simply.

It made me have to think about how I was feeling sorry for myself for having to deal with the weather, something I have no control of whatsoever. That one piece of brilliance from a Down's person changed my attitude forever. Now when it rains I simply get wet.

Quite frankly I would not mind having a Down's person as a roomate if I were living in a barracks-type situation because they would likely be a lot more considerate than a lot of other people.

Thes people are slow. Slow to anger, slow to lose their mien, slow to lose their cool and slow to do dirt to their fellow man.

I enjoy being around them.

Now we have to face the truth as ugly as it is.

My shipmate had a teriffic stutter and Down's people are retarded.

Both of these are plain and simply undeniable truths and to deny it is a lie, plain and simple.

The truth is that having a stammer or Down's does not make you a bad person, it simply makes you what you are and there is nothing wrong with that.

Of course, there are those that put things into a cruel context and generally they get jumped on with both feet by me, but when someone simply refers to it in a truthful context I have to agree.

One of the things we do is try and either deny or whitewash the truth and that bothers me because I'd rather face the truth and get the occasional ugliness of it behind me and get on with things.


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html