Jacque Horn was wearing her favorite purple shirt one day when a phone call made her yearn for a way to cover it up. At 37, her life is one many women would recognize: A full-time job that evokes her passion and creativity; a roommate mother with complex medical needs; a teenage nephew to raise; community commitments; and, once in a while, time for a date.

        But Ms. Horn believes that her favorite purple shirt is a symbol representing a problem in relationships between people with and without disabilities.

        As volunteer coordinator for the Clovernook Center for the Blind, she addresses the reading, shopping and transportation needs of people with disabilities daily. In her advocacy efforts with Queen City Metro's Access paratransit service and involvement with the Renegade Garage Players (a troupe of actors with disabilities), she has counted as friends people with a wide range of physical and cognitive disabilities.

        Immersion in such environments can lull a person into assumptions that people are treated equally at all levels of human interaction. But the purple shirt incident planted her firmly on one side of a fence between those with and without disabilities.

Stained shirt

IF YOU GO

The second annual Dixie Harmon Memorial Award dinner will be 6 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Hyatt Regency downtown. The award was established by Independent Living Options to recognize an individual who exemplifies the drive and spirit of advocacy demonstrated by Ms. Harmon throughout her life. Tickets are $35; call 241-2600.

        Ms. Horn has had a visual impairment all her life. She sees some things, not others. She can see the enormous print on her computer screen, doesn't trip over chairs, but might not know a person is a person “until they move or breathe or speak.” Her white cane signals people that she has a visual disability, but because she sees well enough to fake eye contact, maybe they forget.

        In a brief phone conversation with a friend one day, moods turned ugly. “And why did you wear that shirt with the food stain all over the front?” the friend taunted. The shirt in question was the one she was now wearing, without benefit of laundering between occasions.

        “I was mortified,” she says. The implication was clear: either people thought she already knew about the stain and didn't care or, more likely, thought that telling her would be to offend.

        Ms. Horn started polling her friends with disabilities. She called me, and I polled some more.

        Stories were plentiful. The blind man who wore the mismatched shoes to an important interview, the woman in the wheelchair whose personal care attendant forgot to put on her shoes at all, the woman with a developmental disability who didn't know it wasn't appropriate to ask a server how much the tip should be.

        Disability is an equal opportunity visitor: It knows no age, race, educational, socioeconomic or gender barriers. Consequently, there will be people with disabilities who prefer to dress in a mode recalling the 1980s, people with disabilities who never clean their houses, people with disabilities who lack social skills and a sense of boundaries, and people with disabilities who prefer to wear favorite purple shirts with food stains on them.

        Most, however, exert extraordinary invisible effort to “fit in,” play by the social rules, and, like their nondisabled peers, want to maximize attractiveness.

Speak up

        If you notice that your nondisabled friend didn't zip his pants or has a makeup smear on her sleeve, you'll tell him or her without hesitation. Yet, if you notice the same oversight in a co-worker or friend with a disability, you keep quiet, for fear of embarrassing the other.

        The reality is exactly opposite: Friends and co-workers with disabilitiesvalue such input even more than those without disabilities because they truly may not be aware of the error, and they often have an even greater desire to avoid the minor social faux pas.

        “You need to tell your readers that they should always tell a person with a disability if something is wrong in their appearance,” Ms. Horn urges me.

        And so I have.
       Contact Deborah Kendrick by phone: 673-4474; fax: 321-6430; e-mail: dkkendrick@earthlink.net.
   

Orchestras woo the rock crowd
Young listeners sound off
CSO evokes atmosphere of Italy
'24' goes hour-by-hour through agent's dangerous day
DEMALINE: Theater
Despite posturing, 'Britney' pure teen pop
James Dean the cause for local writers' plays
College sophomore takes Minnie to the max
DAUGHERTY: Everyday
KENDRICK: Alive and well
Romance author writing her own dream
Winburn stays busy outside politics
Ask the critic
Positive attitude makes Amos famous
Thanksgiving countdown
Wyoming Wines specializes in its customers
moe. takes jam-band experience a step beyond
Get to it