Growing up, my best friend Tracey and I had another friend whose little sister had Down Syndrome, so while the rest of our classmates heartily enjoyed using the word retarded to describe everything and everyone in sight, we were chastised every time it accidentally escaped our lips. And so like every child who’s told over and over again that she’s not allowed to do something she really wants to, we grew up getting a lot of pleasure from secretly saying the word behind our friend’s back.
Now that we’re a little more mature and our vocabularies are a little less limited, we don’t need that word anymore, but Tracey still loves to entertain me by sending me links to things like Down Syndrome Dolls, which soooooooooo creepily look like this:
And Downi Creations, which (even more creepily?) look like this:
When I saw how cheap the first ones are, I was like, “OMG, I could totally afford to fill my entire house with those things and then invite unassuming friends over! It’s totally worse than being a cat lady!” My co-worker Nathan said, “Don’t you think that’s bad karma?” I said, “Listen, I’ve been making fun of disabled people all my life, and I’ve done pretty well so far.”
Please note that my birthday is October 9th and that a girl doesn’t soon forget a present such as this.
