MOEBIUS1.ORG
MUSINGS FOR THE NEW YEAR
2003
by KEVIN SMANT
Hey, everyone! Happy New Year, and I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. It’s been a while since I’ve written. As usual, despite the best of intentions, my teaching both soaked up a lot of time and kind of pooped me out. But the holiday vacation has proved refreshing, as it always does.
I’m glad to see though that the list continues to be used to ask questions and get information. Let’s keep doing so as we move into this new year!
As I reflect on last year, I as always had a lot of fun, and learned a great deal, in my teaching here at IUSB. But then, how can one not love teaching? It’s literally a job where every day is a new adventure. This past semester, the adventure included yours truly organizing and doing most of the work for a holiday party for the students who took my courses. Would you believe I ordered 15 large pizzas, and by the time it was over every single piece was gone??? (Did I eat that much when I was their age? Probably!)
I was lucky enough also to go, for the first time, to a Moebius Syndrome conference…and, later, to be able to hang out with individual Moebius friends, including Leslie, Scott, and not long ago, Renee. (Some day I’ll tell the story of me showing Renee the campus of the University of Notre Dame, how we snuck into a few buildings, and almost interrupted a church service. :+) It’s important for us all to talk, to hang out, to swap stories and encourage and be sounding boards…Don’t think that it’s not important. It is.
This year, I hope to see a number of you again…maybe this summer at an informal get-together? I hope that comes off.
Let me leave you with a story. One of the students I know here on campus is named Jamie. Jamie would probably be the first to tell you that she’s the poster girl for the “So You Think You Got Problems???” department. She’s 21; she’s a sophomore now. But she’s confined to a wheelchair, cannot walk at all, and while she has use of her arms and her upper body, still she speaks very slowly and haltingly.
This is because, 4 years ago, Jamie was driving a car, with her mother sitting beside her, on a cold, snowy winter’s day. The car slid on some ice, spun off the road, and smashed into a telephone pole. Jamie’s mother was killed; Jamie was very seriously injured, and is still today, as I indicated, partially paralyzed. Because of the injury to her head and brain, Jamie had to re-learn many of the motor functions she can still perform---even to a degree her speech. Jamie’s father had a hard time dealing with the accident, blamed Jamie for it and for the death of his wife, and has basically disowned her. Her main contact with her family is through her sister, and her grandmother (with whom thankfully she is very close).
And yet, and yet…The amazing thing is not Jamie’s misfortune, or what Jamie can’t do. Rather, it’s what she’s doing! Several, including some admissions folks at other universities, tried to discourage Jamie from trying to attend college. Nope---she’s here, buzzing around campus on kind of combination scooter/wheelchair, with a big basket on it for her books, supplies, food, etc. She’s gotten to know almost everyone on campus, and is a familiar sight here. She managed to get a room in a house very close to campus, one owned by the university. She takes a substantial course load, and does all the things other students do…and wants it that way. She wants to be self-sufficient and independent; she doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her. At the same time, she’s willing to talk to others about what’s happened to her, because she thinks everyone needs to take advantage of every opportunity, to really “go for it!”, as Jamie often says to me when I catch up to her on campus (I keep kidding her that I want to borrow her scooter for a day---that thing can move!)
Jamie absolutely loves Walt Disney stuff---its movies, its videos, all of it. I think a long-time dream of hers was to work for Disney; and, for at least a little while, to live in the South, in the warm weather, to be on her own for a while. And it just so happens that Disney comes to our campus once every year, and offers internships to selected students, to go to Walt Disney World in Orlando for a few months to learn about the business. Somehow though I never put things together…
Until a couple of weeks before the end of the semester, I bumped into Jamie. Beaming with pride, she told me that she had gone to the Disney session on campus a couple of months before…and that she had been accepted into the internship program! Starting this month, she’ll be an intern down in Florida, working with Disney’s merchandise department. And she’ll be good---she seems to know what people will like and what they won’t, what’s cool and what isn’t…and she’ll be an inspiration to folks down there, which I imagine Disney likes to---isn’t Disney supposed to be about dreams and imagination and hope…?
Again, I think some had discouraged her from applying…but it was her dream, and she went for it. And it came true! She was absolutely so happy about it…
There’s a lesson there. We with Moebius Syndrome, and all our friends and family, know a heck of a lot about setbacks and troubles. And we also know that dreams don’t always, right away, come true. But we keep trying, and we do our best, and we keep achieving. There are a lot of Jamies in the Moebius community, I think.
I told Jamie I want her to bring me back a Mickey Mouse hat. Knowing her, she won’t forget.
My cats wish you all a happy new year, too. Funny thing---whenever they watch TV with me, they fall asleep. But then, so do I. And here when I was young, I always said that when I grew up, I’d stay up as long as I wanted. Man, who can figure…ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz…… :+)
Kevin Smant
History/Education
Indiana University South Bend
ksmant@iusb.edu