In the spring of 1969 I
was well into my third year of life with a disability. I had been to
rehab and had been back to the house, spent a year in North Carolina
with my brother and sister-in-law to you my parents a break and I was
back going to school. I had actually taken home economics as one of
my electives for either my junior or senior year electives. Three of
the four girls who who sat at my table volunteered on weekends at the
state school and hospital 30 miles west of Boise. Idaho STATE School
and Hospital was a huge facility housing 600 or so folks with
developmental disabilities some very severe. I was a very
opportunistic teenager in fact the very reason I was in home
economics was because I figured out home economics space was a good
way to meet girls. Taking this opportunism a step further I talked
the girls into giving me a ride over to the hospital so I can see
what it was all about in the hopes of volunteering myself.
Soon I was going over
every Saturday. My workstation at the facility was in the crib ward
in the main hospital. Crib ward as the name denotes was a portion of
the hospital that served the most severely involved residents. We
refer to these folks as kids even though most of them were much older
than I. They were manifestations of the worst birth defects
imaginable. The kind of things I've seen only in books in the parts
of the library that were off-limits to most folks. There were a
number of kids with hydrocephalus, heads as huge as watermelons.
There were other folks could have got jobs working at the Circus in
the sideshow. I was kind of freaked at first but soon grew to love
the kids. My job was to feed these guys. I usually worked from early
afternoon till just after dinner. I basically fed puréed food these
guys. I talked to them even though there was no proof that even heard
sometimes they would track by voice but basically turned her head and
neck touched her cheek with a spoonful of food. It was a messy ordeal
but I grew to enjoy the process.
The state school was
housed on a huge campus. The buildings were ancient, huge hundreds of
residents to a building. In the center of the campus wasan acquainted
little building called the canteen, I wish I had images of the
canteen. It's very much reminded me of an old drugstore cafeteria.
The higher functioning folks on campus hung out at the canteen. The
canteen was the campus hangout. I was amazed at the social structure
that existed at the canteen. In the canteen of course there was a
jukebox in the season that I was there sugar sugar played constantly.
There was a number one son on campus it was the Archie's Sugar Sugar.
I usually packed lunch and get something to drink at the canteen but
you could get hot sandwiches (premade delights thrown into a
microwave and nuked). They also had an impressive selection of candy
offerings.
I ended up volunteering at
state hospital for about a year, later I did a internship there in
behavior modification. That is a whole another post. I totally
enjoyed my time at state hospital, my time there truly influenced the
rest of my vocational life. I met incredible people residents and
professional staff alike I always said you can't tell the players
start a program and anywhere that is true it was at state hospital.
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