3/27/2006

Different Part 2

Last night I watched two movies. The first was Charly.This is a story of a man named Charly who is retarded. An operation is done to raise his IQ. It succeeds for awhile. I believe the most poignant scene in the movie is when Charly is at a bar after his operation. There is a bus boy that is retarded. He has a tray full of glasses and drops them. Everyone in the bar starts laughing at him except for Charly. He knows what it's like to be on the receiving end of the laughter that can cut through you like a knife. He goes and helps the bus boy pick up the glasses. The other people stop their laughter.

What prompts people to laugh at another's expense? There is a certain amount of cruelty involved in it. The thing about Charly even before the operation was done, he was always striving to learn. It's a good movie about the human spirit. It also stars one of my favorite actors, Cliff Robertson.

The other movie was Awakenings. It's about a group of patients in a mental hospital who are catatonic because of and earlier encephalitis infection. Dr. Sayers, played by Robin Williams, tries a new drug, L-Dopa and the result is miraculous for awhile. But what struck me this time about the movie was the man who had Tourette's Syndrome. I had never really noticed him in the other times I had watched this movie. Perhaps it was because I had written about my son's Tourettes just a couple of days before.

It made me start to think that if he had been born in the 1960's, would he have ended up in such a place? It just shows how perceptions about diseases such as Tourettes were and are still misunderstood. Thankfully new and more research is coming to light about the different diseases that affect the brain. It also makes me believe more and more that many of the diseases such as Tourettes are the result of viral and other infections.

The important thing is that because somebody is very different does not mean they need to be feared or ridiculed. The struggles that they face are a testament to the human spirit and soul.

3 Comments:

Blogger Brooke said...

I have always thought of the disabled people in our midst not as some sort of genetic mistake, but rather as a way for the Lord to provide us with the opportunity to serve others.

Am I way off on this?

9:10 AM  
Blogger laspapi said...

What prompts people to laugh at another's expense?

Undeveloped/base minds do this, for there is nothing amusing about the difficulties faced by another human in a bid to lead a "normal" life.

Like animals that move in packs, some find validity by seeing another of the specie struggle.

This category is not to be acknowledged, Sea Witch. You're much higher than they can ever be.

I salute your strength concerning Tourette's syndrome. Whatever does not kill us makes us stronger.

We watched live-feeds of the disaster named Katrina, on TV here in Lagos and your pain was ours. We saw the heroism, the politics...all of it.

"Every man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. Therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."- John Donne

3:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

brooke,

That is the way it should be.

laspapi,

Thank you for your kind words.

5:34 PM  

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