Can I Sit With You?

Can I Sit With You? is the #762 book in sales on Lulu.com!. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you consider that the book I bought my brother for Christmas is #23,216, then our rank is remarkable. We're so happy, so grateful for everyone's support.

Keep spreading the word! Keep telling your friends to buy this wonderful, helpful, inspiring, reasonably-priced book. Use the special education angle if it helps your argument; after all these years of parenting special needs children, we're not above a wry little knife-twist to the guilt/philanthropy section of anyone's heart, if it's for the greater good.

If you'd like to tell your friends and family to BUY BUY BUY about Can I Sit With You?, feel free to use the following letter:

Hi Folks,

Looking for that perfect holiday gift, the one that will both please its recipient and make its giver feel good?

Can I Sit With You? is a book co-edited by special needs parents Shannon Des Roches Rosa and Jennifer Byde Myers. It is a collection of stories about schoolyard social experiences, both good and bad. All proceeds from the sale of Can I Sit With You? go directly to SEPTAR, the fledgling Special Education PTA of Redwood City (www.septar.org).

These beautifully written, heartfelt tales should speak to anyone who has ever struggled to fit in with the other kids at school, wondered about feeling different, or felt like no one could possibly understand what they're going through. We hope they will inspire elementary and middle school students, or at the very least temper their bewilderment as they grapple with issues such as popularity, making friends, puberty, sexual orientation, religion, race, special needs siblings, and bullying.

The stories are told from the point of view of the former students, in their own words. We did not censor the profanities a former eight-year-old screamed at the boys who beat up her special needs brother. There is no preaching or patronizing. As one reviewer wrote, "Perhaps the most important lesson in all of [the stories] is that the writers all survived and grew up to have something to say, and a place to say it."

We think Can I Sit With You? is a wonderful book. And we would be so grateful for your support. You can purchase the book and have it shipped to you or your friends directly at:

http://www.lulu.com/content/1466612

Happy Holidays,

Shannon and Jennifer

P.S. Can I Sit With You? is also an ongoing blog project. You can discuss any of the stories in the book, read new stories, and submit your own stories at www.CanISitWithYou.org / ciswysubmissions@gmail.com.

But it’s still something that brings tears to my eyes and inspires me when I’m feeling low.

by Jessica of Kerflop and Flawed but Authentic
High School

The public schools I attended from 6th grade to 12th grade had amazing special education programs for children with various handicaps. Children with Cerebral Palsy, Down syndrome, Autism, and more participated in “mainstream” programs that placed them along side the rest of us in classes like gym, Biology, History, and more. As a result, I grew up with a fairly mature slice of the adolescent population. I never heard anyone with a disability get teased or made fun of. Popular girls and guys joked with the special ed kids in the halls, walked with them to and from class, and volunteered as aides in their homerooms.

I was very close friends with a darling girl named Vanessa who had Downs. She made us a “Best Friends Forever” wallet card that I still have in my keepsake box. I was proud to see Jeff, another boy with Downs working at a local big box store a few years after we graduated. He would ride the bus and ask me if my friend Amy was willing to marry him yet.

Three years after I graduated from Murray High School, my little sister was a Senior and a finalist for Homecoming Queen. Among the 10 Homecoming Queen finalists were two girls with disabilities. Shellie Eyre had Down syndrome, April Perschon suffered from physical and mentail disabilities due to a brain hemorrhage she had in her childhood. Since special education students usually stay for a few extra years, I too knew Shellie when I attended Murray High.

The finalists were escorted out to the gym floor by their fathers or dates. When Shellie and April walked out, the crowd rose to its feet, cheering and clapping.

Shellie’s parents tried to prepare her for the possibility of not winning, but it was unnecessary. Murray High School crowned an adorable little plump girl with Down syndrome their 1997 Homecoming Queen that night. And you know what? There wasn’t a dry eye in the audience.

Kids can be so cruel. The movies and media that show the popular kids regularly mocking and ostracizing the “losers” isn’t that far off the mark. But stories like this do my soul good. Kids can be mature, responsible, caring human beings. I’ll never forget Shellie’s little face, beaming beneath her sparkly crown. April’s too, as she was crowned an attendant.

Whenever I feel like all of the terrible things that happen in the world seem to be winning, I just open my old sheet of newspaper and read the whole story again. Hope in humanity makes everything feel better.

by Amanda Jones
Age 8 at the time

I had a pedestrian, mildly tortured school experience learning to sort between what mattered and what didn’t, with just the typical betrayals and embarrassments. It was my brother who suffered the brunt of pre-teen flailing, and watching what he went through taught me more than all the bullying I endured.

Marco was (and still is) my sweet older brother. As a child he was scrawny, friendly, funny, affectionate, and energetic. And he had Williams Syndrome, which meant he was a special needs kid. Only in those days no one had yet thought up political correctness, so my brother was just “retarded.”

Williams Syndrome is a genetic disorder with a long, scary list of symptoms. When I look up the most common of them, it says: “Unusual facial structure, developmental retardation, short stature, heart problems, and puffiness around the eyes. Personality traits include being overtly friendly, trusting strangers, and an affinity for music.” My brother had all of these. He still does.

For most of elementary school other children were kind to Marco. They included him in games and they’d even willingly invite him to their birthday parties. But at age 12 this swiftly changed. As hormones began their insidious creep, many friendships turned into outright cruelty.

My brother and I did not go to school together. He went to an all-boys school, and I went to an all-girls. But we lived opposite a park and would go there together almost daily. I was three years younger. He was my only sibling, my big brother, my friend, and often my rival and archenemy. I loved him. I didn’t know to be embarrassed of him, even when he laughed inappropriately loudly or let fly with the animal noises he was prone to making when overexcited. But as he got older he would embarrass the other kids, as if just knowing him made them uncool.

One awful day my mother was called to school early, bringing Marco home with red eyes even puffier than normal. Two former friends had cornered him and beaten him up in the bathroom, calling him Mongol, circus freak, animal. He could not understand what had happened, and his face registered only confusion and disorientation. And for the first time in my life I felt real, adult rage. It sped through me like fire, closing my throat and making me break out in sweat. I was eight years old and I had just felt the shock of injustice.

Marco stayed home for a week to recover. There were hushed phone calls and the low hum of my mother’s fury venting into the mouthpiece. Marco and I lived alone with our mother. Our father had hit the road with a younger woman when I was five. He couldn’t handle raising a “retard.” At the time I didn’t think much about what it must have taken for my mother to raise the two of us alone for so many years. Now I do, and I am staggered.

A month after the “incident,” Marco and I encountered the perpetrators at our park. My brother flinched when he saw them, his “overt friendliness” damaged. He wanted to go home. He started making noises. His hands came up over his head. The boys, angry that the "retard" had caused them innumerable hours of detention, strode towards him, their fists balling, mouths ugly grimaces. At first fear turned my legs and stomach soft. And then, like some sort of miraculous intervention, the rage hit me again and I became possessed. I raced towards the boys yelling words that had never dared cross my lips before.

“You bastards.” (I’d heard my mother call my absent father that often and suspected it was a terrible slight.)

“You stupid, mean little bastards. You assholes. You keep away from my brother!”

And my God, it worked. It actually worked. The boys didn’t know what to do next. They stopped, their faces froze and they stood there looking just like stupid little assholes.

The best part of all is that my brother started to laugh. He laughed his inappropriately loud laugh with a few animal noises thrown in for good measure. The boys sloped off, vanquished, with that sound at their backs. It was wonderful. Admittedly I was an eight-year-old girl and even mean boys probably knew better than to beat up on a small female child, but it was the first genuinely empowering moment of my life. And I guess I learned that it was actually possible to stand up against injustice.

Many years later, I used my brother shamelessly as an acid test for the men I dated. If they were embarrassed of my brother or they were mean or ignored him (and most did), they didn’t last long. They were filed in the “stupid asshole” category and dispatched. And then I met a guy who was different. He didn’t deal with Marco like he was retarded. He wasn’t overly condescending or patronizing or even sickly solicitous. He treated him like an adult who liked to laugh loudly, hug people, and dance erratically. He called him Big Man, which made Marco’s skeletal chest swell with pride. Greg was doing an MBA at an elite business school filled with future captains of industry who wore button-down shirts. One night, he invited Marco and me to a party with his fellow students. I was edgy, thinking that my brother’s unbridled enthusiasm for singing and dancing, or even the animal noises, might cause a scene, and I really liked Greg and didn’t want to have to dispatch him quite so quickly.

When we got there, Greg casually took Marco around, introducing him not as his girlfriend’s brother, but as his “buddy.” He gave Marco a beer and let him loose. Hours later, from across the room, I noticed a circle forming on the dance floor. With rising dread, I broke through the crowd to face what was happening. Marco and Greg were both lying on their backs, spinning in circles, breakdancing to “Red, Red Wine” by UB40. The crowd cheered and clapped and my brother hooted and glowed. Marco had found a hero, and I had found a husband.

I guess the moral to this story is that in the end, it’s much cooler not to be a stupid, mean bastard.

Can You Hear Us Squee!?

One of Shan's favorite people -- professional comix artist, rabblerouser, and fellow quirky kid mom Lea Hernandez -- is not only going to contribute to Can I Sit With You?, but she's going to donate the book cover! This kind of generosity and ass-kickery in the name of kids who aren't even hers makes us all sniffly with glee.

We have more writings promised from some of your favorite bloggers, but since they've not publically announced their intentions, we can't yet crow about them. Yet. But keep your eyes peeled. Especially this week.