“You know, I remember I was pretty freaked out by it when I was younger, too. When I was studying special education,” Adam explained. Maybe not so much in his classes when he was still removed from the kids and being in a position of guidance and leadership. Even though all he wanted in his life was to be a leader for kids, to help them along during the most difficult time in any child’s life, it was one thing to want to help and another to be actually there. “Of course I always wanted to help, and this population always had a special spot in my heart. But when it came to field work, I would worry that I wouldn’t be good at it. That I’d somehow mess it up.”
Adam found that the best advice wasn’t always advice. Sometimes it was just admitting a shared life experience to let the other person know they weren’t alone. That others had leapt the same hurdles and found they weren’t very tall hurdles in the first place. He smiled at Paxton’s words. “It’s absolutely worth it. There will be challenging days for sure, but then moments that remind you why you’re here.”
“Me?” He asked, raising his eyebrows. He shouldn’t have been surprised by this question, but usually the only people who cared to ask were women on first dates. “The first time I ever spoke to someone was in college. Before then, I signed to communicate. Other kids thought I was deaf or mute, or just that there was something wrong with me because I was different. They called me ‘retard’ and all that stuff. It made me think about why we’re so, xenophobic I guess? I was as mentally and physically capable as any other kid, but sign language made me weird. It made me think about how the kids really living with disabilities must feel– frustrated they can’t run in gym like the other kids, that they can’t speak as easily or button their own coats. They already feel different without the teasing, they can see they’re different. I just wanted to be someone who could advocate for them. Make them feel a little less different.”
“I feel like that all the time,” Pax confessed. “Not just with this, but with med school, too. I’ve always known I wanted to be a doctor, and my parents always supported that, but now that I’m actually applying, it feels really real. Like, I’m going into this field where people’s lives are going to depend on me and my knowledge and how hard I’ve studied. I’m worried about exactly what you said, that I won’t be good at it, or that I’ll mess it up.” Maybe not the best thing to say to a supervisor on the first day of a volunteering job that involved working with special needs students, but now, there was no where to go but up.
The older man almost seemed surprised at the question, though that wasn’t surprising to Pax. People were always taken off-guard when he asked them about, well, them. Why they did things, what interested them in their path. He asked everyone, just to get a sense of whether he felt the same way everyone else did when they’d found the right thing. The path that mattered, that made sense. “I never thought much about any of that, growing up,” Pax said, feeling a pang of guilt at Adam’s explanation. He’d never been outright rude to anyone, that he could think of, at least, but that didn’t mean all of his behavior had been okay. He’d definitely thought of himself as doing a good deed when he’d partnered up with someone in class who was maybe considered an outsider for any reason. In hindsight, probably a shitty outlook. “I think that’s a great reason to go into this field though, you get to use your voice for good.”
