Not Being Me

I love Halloween because I love pretending to be someone else. Certainly there is the fun of dressing up in a costume and trick-or-treating. But there is more to it than that for me, as a person with a disability. For a day I get to be someone without a disability. Being a pharaoh this year meant that I was King of Egypt for a day…not Vinny, an 11 year old nonspeaker. It was so much fun and mentally a vacation from this reality. 


Maybe there will come a time where I love being Vinny, but that’s not now. Most days I hate this person we call Vinny: he is fat and ugly and disabled, and he can’t make his mouth say all the real words in his head. He has to sit in a classroom where he is treated like a moron. I really don’t want to be this Vinny:  I want to be cool Vinny who can do things I can be proud of. But for now I will have to be content being a pharaoh for a day.