Sometimes, when we are called upon to clarify things for children, we are more able to understand them ourselves. That's what happened for me recently, after presenting three separate school programs.

        The typical responses of each age group are familiar to me.

        First-graders take you as they see you. You're a grown-up. You are, therefore, much more wise and powerful than they. They want to know about my guide dog. Not the questions adults might ask, like, “How does she learn the difference between right and left,” or “How does she help you in crossing a street?” No, they ask really important questions, like: “What does she eat?” “Can she play ball?” “Does she sleep with you?”

        This is good. These are the things adults really want to know but feel too sophisticated to ask.

        Once the dog stuff is worked out, first-graders always want to know “How do you drive?” I've heard it many times before, but the question is always astonishing to the other grown-ups in the room, so is definitely good for a laugh.

        “Not very well,” I tell them. “I know where I'm going, but I can't see the signs.”

        Six-year-olds have other pressing questions.

        “How do you find your shoes?”

        As irritating as it must sound when it comes from their own moms, I tell them what I tell my children: My shoes will be wherever I left them.

        “How do you brush your teeth?”

        With a toothbrush.

        “How do you cook?”

        Usual methods, but add Braille cookbooks and all senses.

        And sometimes, a question touches my heart like: “Does it ever hurt?”
       

More serious

               Sixth-graders are much more serious. They want to know about what I can see and what I can't. They want to know about technology. They wonder how I organize my clothing (very snappily, of course), and how I learn a new environment (with all my senses and a little extra time). They want to know if I like movies (if they're worth watching) and where I got my dog. And often, they want to know if I'm ever embarrassed when I make a mistake.

        High school students are too cool to ask as many questions.

        There are always the predictable “Where did you get your dog?”

        And “How do you shop?”

        Beyond the superficial, though, the questions from teen-agers are more cautious, delicate. “What is the most painful thing about having a disability?” Or “Do you ever wish you didn't have a disability?”

        What I realized in this round of talking to students goes beyond my long-time recognition that younger children are more genuine, honest and curious. It is a welcome thing, this curiosity, and much more refreshing than the sometimes fearful aloofness of adults. The older the child, the more adult-like they become in that cautious reserve, the more likely to see those traits that make a person different than those that make us all the same.
       

Like any other loss

               This time, though, I learned a few other things.

        First, at every level, they want to know if it hurts, is embarrassing, painful. The answer is generally no. Disability is like any other loss in life — death of a loved one, loss of a pet, failure in a job, a lost election. One grieves, if appropriate, and then generally moves on, placing the loss in the back seat of a fully and busy life.

        But I was reminded of something far simpler and more encouraging,too. From the storybook I read to the first-graders to the poems to entertain the teens, I realized that none of them much cared that I was reading from Braille. A story is a story, after all,and reading is reading, whether from print, Braille, memory or Sanskrit. If the material is good, the listening pleasure is the same.

        It is an awakening that makes me want to run through the corridors of airports, office suites and physicians' waiting rooms reading entertaining tidbits to all the skeptical able-bodied grown-ups in the world.

        Cincinnati writer Deborah Kendrick is a nationally recognized advocate for people with disabilities. Write her at Cincinnati Enquirer, Tempo, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202. E-mail: dkendrick@enquirer.com.
       

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