Mike O.

This is for all you T-lane fans out there.

My high school had an exceptionally large special ed program. Basically, this meant that we shared gym class and health class with the “special people”.

Picture, if you will, a young me: loads of school spirit, good grades, community volunteer, club joiner, all-around general suck-up. For four years I had smiled blithely as the special people bounced basketballs off my head in gym class. As they stuck their feet in the Thousand Island dressing at the salad bar. As they drooled on the cafeteria table the lunch period before mine so that I found a sizeable puddle when I took my seat.

Then, in the last semester of my senior year, I was sitting in the last row in the second to last seat of my Health class. And Mike O. was sitting behind me.

Mike O. seemed ok. He didn’t try to run over the back of your heels with his wheelchair. He didn’t eat oatmeal at lunch and spit it at people. He could hold his own head up. Until he got it into head to call me “Old Lady”. It was all downhill from there.

Every 30 seconds I’d feel a tap on my shoulder. “I know what I’m gonna do, Old Lady!” he’d whisper gleefully. Hard as he was to ignore, I was intent on learning about barbiturates and methamphetamines and refused to turn around. For months this went on. Old Lady, Old Lady. Finally, on the very last day of classes, I couldn’t resist. I turned around. “What’cha gonna do, Mike?” I whispered.

Mike’s eyes got huge and round. He had the Old Lady’s attention. Without further ado, he ripped off his shoes and socks and shoved his big toe directly into a ragged metal hole in the filing cabinet nearest to us and then pulled it out in bloody shreds, howling with pain. Everyone turned to glare at me as if I had committed a murder.

Was this his plan all along, or was it a sudden impulse? Is there a lesson to this story? I surely don’t know. But if you do meet Mike O. and he calls you Old Lady, remember this cautionary tale. This is a warning to you all: years of hard work can go right down the tube when people think you’re mean to the special people.