The school I went to when I was in first and second grade, Central, was built a little before World War I, and the architects had certainly never heard of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Probably because it hadn't been passed yet.) To get into the thing you had to go up six or seven steps, my classroom was on the second floor, and the restrooms were, of course, in the basement. The steps in the stairwells were made of some kind of stone that had been rounded by fifty some years of use. They were also slick as ice whenever there was the least bit of moisture on them.
Because my crutches would often just slide out from under me on those steps the principal, Mr Green, would carry me up to my classroom in the morning whenever I had a knee hemorrhage, and then back down at the end of the day. At lunch time he would carry me down to the lunch room and then back up to the classroom, and if I needed to go #1 or #2 Mr Green would carry me down the three floors to the restroom. All this being lugged about like an infant was just a bit humiliating for me, and didn't do Mr Green's bad heart much good either, so I often didn't go to school when I had a knee bleed.
The Rest of the Story
25 May 2009
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