I have Tourette Syndrome, and in the 19 years since being diagnosed, I have never met anyone else with T.S.
(Actually, my middle school band teacher was diagnosed with TS years after he taught me - I’d told him so - but because he didn’t think he had TS when I knew him, he doesn’t really count. Also, I spoke briefly with amazingly bad-ass tic-er, Brooklyn City Councilman Jumani Williams, but didn’t get to see or hear him tic very much, and because we only shared about 45 seconds of conversation, he doesn’t really count either.)
I would like to have a conversation with someone else with TS. To watch them tic, have them see me tic, and see if it feels any different than when I’m tic-ing around “normal” people.
There’s a community out there that I would like to become a part of. I’m not a kid anymore. At 27 years old, I’m pretty sure i’m not going to outgrow it (apparently sometimes a possibility), and on days when my tics are reasonable, i’m okay with that. but, after complaining to friends and loved ones about my tics and the physical pain they can sometimes cause, about the meds and their side-effects, and about the occasional embarassmant I still feel when tic-ing in front of strangers, i’d also like to be able to share it with someone who’s had something of a similar experience. who can express not just sympathy, but also empathy.
Any takers?
Often, I have said that working with Our Time is the best thing I do. And, unlike much of what I often say, I mean it every single time.
Our Time is a theater company that works with young people who stutter, ages 8-18.
I made my way towards Our Time through a series of touching coincidences, all of which began when I was maybe 6, or 7, or 8 years old, growing up in D.C. Thank you, Dad.
I could say more, and more, and more and more and more about how much Our Time means to me, personally, but frankly, what I get out of working with these kids is besides the point. I have seen, over the course of 4 years, the impact that being in the company has on the kids. I want to share an anecdote that has always stood to me as a living testament to what this company is and does:
I started working with Our Time as a costume designer. The following moment occured during the second set of shows I designed for them.
I was sitting in the audience - making notes on my costumes - during the final dress rehearsal of the Teens’ play, a collaborative work written and performed by all the members of the Teen Company, together. The play they’d written this year was about high school cliques. There was the preppy clique, the gangsta clique, and the sporty clique. The kids write the play themselves, and they also cast themselves as whoever/whatever they want to play. As such, there were three kids in the gangsta clique.: K, N, and A. K and A had been in the company 4 and 3 years respectively that year, and I believe it was N’s first year. they were all 17 or so years old. K and A were old buddies - even though they didn’t go to school together, they hung out outside of Our Time, had similar interests, came from similar neighborhoods, etc. N was different. N was skinny as all get-out, with big thick glasses…and some sort of notable learning/developmental difference. All three kids stuttered like woah.
N, a shy, quiet guy in real life, wrote himself a scene where he picks a fight with one of the sporty kids, over a girl he was trying to hit on. In this scene, he’s shouting across the room at the sporty kid, while K’s character stands next to him as back-up. Now, N is notoriously hard on himself. He knows what he’s capable of, and he doesn’t accept any less. He wants to nail every single moment. Alas, during this final dress rehearsal, he had lost his line, the big, bold, shouting line that marked his stake in the scene. Anyone could see he was frustrated, sad, angry. And it wasn’t that he was having a block. (A block is the term for what happens when a person stutters through a word, a sentence, or a syllable. ) Having a block onstage would have been no biggie- after all, everyone on stage around him were people who stuttered. The entire cast stuttered throughout the play, having blocks left and right. Forgetting his line: that’s what killed him.
As my eyes scanned the company on stage, looking for fraying hems, ill-fitting pants, I landed on K and N, standing next to each other. K put his hand on N’s shoulder as he struggled to find the big-shabam line. He pat him on the back, and nodded his head - all without ever breaking character himself. Just to let him know, “hey man, I know you got this.” N eventually did remember his line, and they all kept rehearsing.
I almost cried, my heart was so full.
This wasn’t just any demonstration of comradely support between cast members. Because these aren’t just any kids. These two teen-aged boys could not look more different standing next to each other. If they were not both company members in Our Time, they would have never met - and they probably would have never met any one even resembling the other. But these two were tight. They loved each other - they still do. And it was the atmosphere of love, total, un-compromised acceptance of Our Time that gave them to each other in this way.
All of this is to say: Our Time does things for young people that I have never seen any other non-profit come even close to accomplishing. Forget the fact that it creates a safe space for often-isolated stuttering youth to forge a community with one another. I swear to god, this theater company plays a vital role in turning good, cool kids into great, A-MAZING kids.
Please support the work of Our Time by bidding in their Silent Auction online. It’s part of their annual benefit Gala, coming up this April 19th.
Below are two links to auction items that I am donating/co-donating. If you like what you see, awesome, bid on me! if not, check out the other items. there’s some super cool stuff.
peace love and hope,
Shiff
http://www.biddingforgood.com/auction/item/Item.action?id=107824525
http://www.biddingforgood.com/auction/item/Item.action?id=107831901
Departing from my new friend Jenet:
I return to my long-time companion, Mr. Hitler. (yes, I read a lot about The Nazis. No, I’m not an anti-semite. For real. Joke’s over.)
Adolf Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler, born Alois Schicklgruber, was born to the unmarried Maria Schicklgruber. When Maria married Johann Goerg Hiedler, fiver years after her son’s birth, Johann raised her son as his own, and Alois’ birth father has never been known. Speculations about the possibility of Adolf Hitler’s jewish heritage derives from this unknown paternal grandfather. When Alois was in his 40’s he was legally legitimized by Hielder’s family, and changed his last name to Hitler (taken, obviously, from Hiedler).
Okay, here’s where it gets fun.
So, Alois Hitler seems to have been a bit of a shmuck. Or, you could call him unlucky in love. He was married a total of three times. He separated from his first wife after a nearly 20-year marriage, and she died shortly thereafter. No children resulted from that union. One month after his estranged wife’s death, he married again, to a woman with whom he’d already had a child out of wedlock. Within a year of the birth of their second child, Angela, Alois’ second wife died of Tuberculosis. Six months later, his third marriage was to Klara Polzl, who was not only 23 years younger than Alois, but also the granddaughter of his adoptive uncle, in whose home he had spent the majority of his childhood. Klara, herself, had also spent some time living at Alois ‘s home during his first marriage.
The ultimately illustrious Adolf Hitler was the third child born during his father’s third marriage, but the first to survive past infancy. Two more came after him, a boy who died at the age of 6, and, finally the youngest, Paula, who lived into adulthood.
Okay, but remember Angela, Hitler’s half sister from his father’s second marriage? Angela was the only one of his siblings with whom Adolf maintained a closeness, and it was HER daughter, his niece, Geli, with whom Hitler supposedly “fell in love” some years later. Now, mind you, my personal opinion is that Hitler was gay gay totally gay Anderson Cooper gay, (he avoided questions about his refusal to settle down romantically with a woman because he was “Married to Germany, the Motherland”), but he has been legitimately noted to have had strong relationships with three different women. Geli Raubal was the second of these and, as noted in one of my Fun Facts a few months ago, Geli committed suicide while involved with the man who would later come to be known by many as the greatest villain the world has ever known.
And…scene.
Momma-
I have believed - and have articulated aloud - for some time now, that hillary’s gender is a greater detriment to her candidacy than is barack’s race - mostly because we Americans as a community tend truly not to realize that gender still IS a driving force in our ideological, political, familial, political make-up. As is race, fer damn sure, but we still tend to feel far more compelled to be sensitive to dialogue regarding race than we do towards gender (such sensitivity NOT being unwarranted). I think it is a PROBLEM that clinton’s public image is invariably determined by her gender. And that it absolutely speaks to lingering OVERT sexism, though it is so rarely recognized as such. As a political and socially active cause, perhaps feminism itself has hit the proverbial “glass ceiling”. I don’t for a second think that, as a womyn, I am not subjected to categorizations and diminshings based on truly nothing more than my sex organs (and I do believe that, while an individual’s sex is biologically determined through body parts, our genders are socially constructed. - though, there is a slippery scale sometimes even to the extent to which our sex is biologically pre-determined, when one considers the multitude of cases of infants born with ambiguous genitalia, and the drs and young parents who surgically make a decision for them-). To be clear- I have, even in recent weeks, been absolutely and clearly subjected to gendered assumptions about my professionalism and my maturity by a collaborator who should damn well know better.
All of this being what it is,
I support obama because of his poltical platform, NOT because of his gender NOR his race. I think it’s a damn shame that hillary’s campaign may have well been altered by the fact of her gender (note- how often is it that we refer to presidential candidates by their first names (rarely) - but, even I am more likely to refer to her as hillary than as clinton - as I do with obama and mccain), but hillary is just but a visible example of a systemic problem that has not gone away. Such questions and problems will, I believe, exist well after both clintons are long dead - and, whether hillary clinton becomes the first madame president or not, these systemic forces will journey on, and it is our responsibility to fight them on every personal, community, and national level.
Point being- I think we want to think - and some of us truly do think - that gender is no longer an active(/destructive) political force. The fact that it is NOT typically recognized as such, but does indeed play such a part, is what becomes so dangerous. We don’t even realize when we are making gendered choices or assumptions or developing gendered opinions.
Sometimes we certainly do, as with the hillary nutcracker - but it is the citizens who don’t even REALIZE that gender impacts their view of hillary who are most dangerous. As Malcolm x said (paraphrashing): give me a southern racist over a northern liberal any day of the week, because at least with the self-described southern racist, I know where I stand.
Love,
Laura :-)
8/24 Fun Fact
Okay, I think this one is really cool. So: Olivia Newton John’s mother was the daughter of a German Nobel Prize-winning physicist who left Germany with his wife in the 1930’s because the Nazis didn’t like jews. Way to go Mr Newton/Mr John. On the other branch of her family tree: Ms. Newton John’s father came from Wales and, as an officer during the War, was THE officer who took Rudolph Hess into Allied custody when he landed in Scotland in 1941. (Rudolph Hess was Hitler’s chief deputy until 1941, when he absconded with a German plane and flew to the UK, thinking he could single handedly make peace with the Allies on Hitler’s behalf. Instead of being received as a diplomat, he was captured as a prisoner of war and held in a British prison until the Nuremberg Trials, where he was tried as a war criminal in the first major trial, alongside the likes of Hermann Goering. At Nuremberg, there was much debate as to the level, or existence, of his sanity, and he was ultimately sentenced to life in prison, which he served at Spandau Prison in West Berlin until he committed suicide in 1987 at the age of 93. He’s generally considered a nut. But how cool for Olivia Newton John’s dad?! Quite a place to hold in history.)
Hey Shmei-
Well, if we’re setting aside for the moment my belief that the labels of “good”, or “bad” are irrelevant and useless (thanks michael krass…):
I don’t like the use of the word “ethnic” to desrcibe ANYTHING. food, people, aesthetics (“she has a really ethnic look), language, dialects, neighborhoods…
because it doesn’t mean much, other than “not-white”, or “not-american” or “not-white-american”. and usually, it refers to “not-white/american” but OF color. moreover, “ethnic”, as a descriptor, has had an evolving meaning over the last several centuries.
a brief history lecture, if you’ll indulge me:
When the first waves of post-revolutionary immigration started to happen in the US, it was largely Italians, Germans, and Irish. As such, they were the others, and Italians especially were the darky others. They were the “ethnics”. (naturally, slaves, and later freedman/women were largely irrelevant and defied such classifications, as they were either considered property, or were then so isolated and segregated that their difference was self-evident.)
And then eastern European jews, escaping the pogroms / military conscription in Russia and Poland. the jews. VERY ethnic.
Then there was the beginning of the Asian influx as the trans-continental rail-road was being built: Chinese laborers who were absolutely nothing other than indentured servants. And then Latinos, other Asian natonalities, African immigrants…etc etc.
African Americans are hardly ever referred to as “ethnic” because they’ve been in this country so long, they’re just the perennial Dark Other.
and Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European americans are, at this point, almost always thought of as “white”. not ethnic. not the other.
so, as I understand it, ethnic means “foriegn/dark-skinned other”. those who are considered ethnic change from one generation to the next.
italian food is no longer considered “ethnic food”: thai food is. ethopian food, most certainly.
so, is it a “bad” thing to say about someone? a bad descriptor? racist? probably not as bad as the nigger, spic, gook (for chinese), kike (jews), jap (as it refers to japanese americans, not jewish american princesses), towel-head, kraut (for germans) guinea (for italians)…etc.
it is most CERTAINLY racialist.
and, usually ignorant, as it doesn’t actually describe anything at all, except otherness.
which leads me to the question that I don’t think has a single, all-encompassing answer: is otherness a bad thing?
it sure is when it’s used against a person or a group, either personally or institutionally.
but, as we all know, to acknowledge difference is not necessarily a bad thing. we don’t particularly want to be a melting pot anymore, but maybe a salad bowl…
soooo…
ethnic.
not usually a compliment, unless it is accompanied by “exotic” which makes it sexualized, and I guess some people think that makes it a compliment, but still not really…
not as destructive as other types of racial language…
but most definitely not helpful.
