The “mens sana in corpore sano” War Against Autistics, Dyslexics and Dyspraxics…

(Multiple Trigger Alert: Accounts of Abuse and Humiliation Against Autistics, Dyslexics, Dyspraxics!!!)

Please don’t be offended by this post if you’re an athlete or someone else who believes in what I consider to be the myth of “a healthy mind in a healthy body”…

Because while I don’t mind at all if you earnestly believe that your healthy mind is supposed to dwell in your healthy body, or that for you, a healthy body is supposed to be an athletic one, for me, and for innumerable other non-athletic individuals, including countless autistics and dyspraxics whose bodies were/are “chubby and ungainly” as in Silberman’s mention of Asperger’s “poor Hellmuth”, life under this despicable, “mens sana in corpore sano” banner of humiliating the weak and less able, was and it still is a living hell, having wished so many and unfortunate times to have been literally thrown down the chasms of Taygetus…

I won’t launch in any diatribes about the fact that no human progress has ever been achieved in athletic arenas, except for who can run, swim, jump, kick etc, faster, higher and stronger, but I may disrespectfully ask, why was I forced, coerced and abused into achieving the impossible with a dyspraxic body in the name of a dysfunctional “Physical Education” mentality, while NONE of my athletically abled school colleagues were ever coerced e.g. into writing poetry?

Oh, and as I’m hearing your “but you need talent to write poems” disgruntled question, I’ll venture asking if the same could be also true about physical abilities for sports? Or do you think that only the less -physically- talented/abled are “entitled” to the ridicule of an entire class/school because we can’t do push-ups, frog-leaps, high-jumps, long-jumps, hurdles, we can’t climb ropes, run fast, play football, handball, basketball, volleyball, rugby, etc, while the less creatively talented/abled are exempt?

And I’m not talking about what you didn’t like about the literature and language curriculum, because the curriculum never asked you to force yourself ALL ALONG your school years to naturally start writing lengthy poems in rhyme and meter, long before you knew what “rhyme and meter” are, while the same curriculum forced me to be the laughingstock of an entire school’s gymnasium, as year after year I landed in front of, under, on top, on the sides, but never over the vaulting horse… Standing there, head bowed, swallowing my tears, rubbing my bruises, knowing that at the bottom of the invincible climbing-rope, my overweight PE teacher is going to give me another “you should try harder, you know”…

“Shame on you! Are you stupid, or dumb?” was the “best” my maths, physics, chemistry teachers could do in order to “boost” my chances to understand algebra, analytical algebra, trigonometry calculations etc, which were for them, the epitome of a “healthy mind”, proof that you’re not “eligible” for the “retard school”…

So, there was I, clumsy representative of generations of autistics, dyslexics (dyscalculia included) and dyspraxics, unhappily looking forward to receiving at home “what I deserve” for my bad grades (after a while I wasn’t even urinating in my trousers anymore…), happily knowing that my cubes need their daily arranging, my model planes their daily aligning, my favourite book (Zaharia Stancu’s Barefoot) its (probably) 139^th consecutive reading, Darwin’s “Origin of Species” its further analysis, and Miklós Nyiszli’s “Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account” its horrifying impression on the mind of confused teenager…

Back in those days, no one would have thought that the chubby, big headed, silent dreamer they were abusing and humiliating for having a weird, “unhealthy” (read autistic/dyslexic/dyscalculic) mind in an unhealthy (read dyspraxic) body, would have grown to simultaneously interpret in three languages, creatively use four, understand six, using altogether eight, having self-taught himself three musical instruments, and earning (so far…) three major degrees and two postgraduates?

And as a final paradox, while in the military (you wouldn’t have believed that I’ve earned my stripes and stars once…) which I appreciated for its rule/order/hierarchy structure, they discovered quite quickly that I still can’t do more than 1 1/2 push-ups, and I still can’t climb ropes, but I’m very good at drawing complicated military maps, and I still can’t run neither much, nor fast, but I can force-march 30 km without any stops, leaving behind anyone else, arriving at the training range one hour before anyone else. And while as clumsy as a sloth when asked to run an obstacle course, it turned out that after graduating the military infirmary paramedic training, I was amongst the few to surgically remove/treat abscesses threatening to turn into septicaemias, and administer injections to infants living in remote areas, far away from regular civilian healthcare support. The “jarheads” saw not only what I can’t do, but also what I can, and facilitated my progress accordingly.

All these, and humbly much, much more, as someone who’s never been neither physically, nor mentally “healthy”, according to this planet’s favourite athletically inclined proverb.

But I could have done these, and probably much more, without the “spartan” beatings, the scorn, the shouting and the humiliation, for no other “fault” than that of having been born this way, my way…

Photo credits: http://helenroche.com/work/personal-and-political-appropriations-of-sparta-in-german-elite-education-napolas-and-prussian-cadet-schools