“Everybody Eats” (click link to access video)

Any chance someone else in the world remembers this song from Sesame Street? It has a catchy tune and is a quick video showing people of all ages and animals of all origins, eating. Hard to know what the intention was when this was created but my sense is that it has something to do with common humanity, and recognizing this is something all of us do.

But when you are a young mother, as I was of a child who did not eat, and in fact was tube feeding my second child who was born unable to sustain his own life, it felt like me and my children were anything BUT part of common humanity. Here we are passively watching something as innocent as public television, and still feeling ostracized and singled out as “not fitting” here either.

If we are lucky enough to be born with bodies that function as we expect them to, and as we believe they “should” we have also inherited the luxury of belonging. We may even feel entitled to the parts of life that we expect to be on the horizon of choices of how we will spend our time.

But when we aren’t so lucky, we are forced to recon with our own humility. When we are different (aka, not perfect which by the way applies to every one of us) there is a loneliness that sucks all the air out of the room. Some differences are easier to mask than others.

For me, this little video struck a vulnerable chord in me as I sat in my living room, barricaded from even fitting in with the folks on Sesame Street, which is not easy to do. If they’d added just one person to that clip, that had a feeding tube, I don’t think it would have hurt so deeply.

If you are one of those people that gets “annoyed” when special needs conditions or differences cross over into main stream media, consider yourself at an advantage, that you can separate yourself from “THAT” club. Those of us in it have no choice, and we are reminded more often than not, that we are outsiders.

Inclusion is not about choice, its about being open to all of humanity not just the places where we ourselves belong. And if we want to be accepted, we need to extend our patience and non-judgment for others, for it to be extended to us.

Over the years, Sesame Street and some of the other PBS shows have done a superior job at recognizing the importance of integration, and providing ways for us to see ourselves in others, and for our children to do the same.

Next time you see a wheelchair user in a TV show or advertisement, try to resist the feeling of “Seriously? Does everything have to be politically correct?” To “Damn, I need to count my blessings and be grateful that I have been spared the experience of being different.”