Trial by Fire Parenting: Episode 151: I'm gonna try really hard not to offend anyone with this one...

... Buuut, I'm not sure I can do it. Let's start with a disclaimer: Retarded people, er... developmentally disabled, or mentally handicapped or whatever it is that they are supposed to be called, are not to be mocked. It isn't their fault that they have (insert disorder here) and most of their actions, movements and speech are beyond control. Life is difficult for both them and their families and I am not trying to make fun of anyone with anything here. This is not intended to be a mockery... That said, I can't go on without telling you about our day at the park with the slow teenagers.

Today was absolutely beautiful. 75, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. The perfect day to be out at a park on the ocean. We were doing the usual. Swinging, sliding, climbing. There was a nice Spanish grandmother with a 2-year-old and some chick with another kid.

*Off topic, there was a movie made in the early 2000's called Primer. It is pretty much impossible to follow unless you were a physics major, but the basic premise is these physicists, while trying to create a better refrigerator to market in their garage, stumble upon time travel. In the most non-hokey way possible these two dudes figure out how to use a public storage box to travel back in time. Not to, like, 1792, or 1956, but more like yesterday, or last week. Essentially, they have the power to correct mistakes or win the lottery or pick the correct stock. They, obviously, start to abuse it and at some point start encountering themselves in the past/future, effectively screwing up the human matrix. I am pretty sure at one point one of the guys suffocates himself from the past. Anyway, I was both terrified and intrigued by this movie and spent many a night when I was in college taking mind-altering drugs and trying to follow exactly what happened. This movie messes me up to this day. I still think about it. I don't know the specifics, but the plot seemed so plausible.

Anyway, sometimes there are times in the day where I feel like I am in Primer. I see my car, or someone who looks like me, or the baby, or Monica, and I wonder if I am seeing myself from the future. The point is, there was a lady at the park who from a distance looked and dressed exactly like Monica. Even as we were approaching the park she was looking at me the whole way with a smile on her face. I got there and she gave me a friendly 'hello.' Even facially, they were similar. They had the the same body type, the same mannerisms. The same flip flops. I kind of went the other direction because it freaked me out. If I had never seen Primer it would have been fine. But that shit messed me up, man. Yet another reason I can only watch dumb comedies now. I'm still reeling from Black Swan, too.*

After Monica from the future left and the Spanish lady went for a walk we were left alone. From a distance I saw about 10 teenagers or young adults approaching the park. I assumed they would be the usual trouble makers who tag the slides and occupy the swings, but as they got closer it became apparent that they were a little on the slow side. In my experience I have found that many times in these situations there is a leader. Still slow, but less slow than everyone else. This group appeared to be led by one such leader. (Later an adult man arrived with another kid, who must have been having an issue, and that man appeared to be the councilor or what have you, but they were left to their devices for the first five minutes or so).

I watched them come to the park with no opinion on their presence, other than the fact that it is a little sad for a 19-year-old to be on the same mental level- or lower- than my 2-year-old daughter. After watching them for about 20 minutes or so, I can't not describe the scene.

First off, they were all between the ages of 15-20. They were all grossly overdressed in South Pole jackets and hooded sweatshirts and sweaters. The first woman to arrive walked immediately over to the slide, stared at it for 30-45 seconds and then dropped, face first, on to the base of the slide where she remained, no lie, for the rest of the time. Every once in a while someone would try to get her up and she would refuse. Face down. legs hanging off the end of the slide cut off at about the waist. She made no noise. She rarely looked up.

Another woman, wearing a teal sweat suit, too small for her heavy frame, sat down in the mulch, grabbed a handful, held it in front of her face and just yelled at it. Just yelled. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." In to the mulch. This, too, went on, with brief lapses in the yelling, for the entirety of our visit. Like, what's up? Why are you so mad at that mulch?

Another gentleman, with a well-groomed neu-metal goatee, was very clearly upset about something, and he very clearly had a recent physical confrontation, because he was being isolated from every one else and he was just wearing a t-shirt but still had mittens on both hands. He was not allowed to take the mittens off. He sat, the entire time, on a picnic table- not the bench, the table- scowling. At one point, the adult man leader came over and gave him a cell phone which he used to turn on some music. I am not sure what he was listening to, but it was in the Destiny's Child, Jennifer Hudson genre.

Two of the folks that I actually envied a bit were a male and female who fell in love with the see saw. After kites and puzzles, see saws are potentially the shittiest thing ever to ask a kid to play with. Puzzles are definitely the worst, so boring, pointless and unrewarding, and kites are a scam, but see saws are right up there. Pain in the ass simple machine. Who wants to do that when there are slides and swings and a rock wall? Anyway, special people, is the answer to that. Those two loved it. Laughing, bouncing, smiling. It probably helped that they had the perfect weight differential, too. It just seemed so pure and innocent and fun.

So, here I was, Jennifer Hudson (maybe) playing in the background, failing to drown out the woman yelling at mulch, standing motionless next to my incredibly, incredibly confused, speechless child, trying to find the words to explain the face down slide girl, see saw pals and, most disturbing to her, the mulch yeller. It was at this time that Av looked at me and said 'Um, home? Mac and cheese?' 'Ahhhh, yeah. Let's go ahead and just have some mac and cheese and forget about this whole scene.

I guess the point is that there is no real good way to explain the mentally challenged to a 2-year-old, and for some reason today the group that we saw was so zombie-like and bizarre that it was a scene out of some sort of horror movie. I feel bad for them, and I know that they need to get out on a nice day, but I wished that they had chosen another park.