Live Long and Prosper

my science fiction addiction started in high school.   i would hide in the school library during breaks to avoid the interminable taunts that children throw at those they perceive as "different".    school  libraries weren't well endowed then so it didn't take long to reach the "S" for sci-fi category, a location i  ordinarily would not have considered, and found a fascinating series of teen novels.    i don't remember what they were titled or anything about the story line except there was a Professor Mary  who had a conspicuous mole on her cheek.   interesting that it was a character with a different "difference" who stayed with me.   i would daydream through double maths that i was the Professor on a planet far from mine and .......I  WASN'T COMING BACK!!!

A few years later a very wise lady passed me the C S Lewis trilogy Out of the Silent Planet and introduced me to sci-fi as literature.  from those beginnings a love of other worlds began.   true, i tend toward the dystopia of Blade Runner and Firefly more than the soft sci-fi of Star Trek but it still comes from wanting to run to a place a long way away.

If ever an actor was defined by a role it must have been the late Leonard Nimoy AKA,  Star Trek's Mr Spock.   no matter what role he subsequently played the shadowy spirit of Spock would always be leaning over his shoulder.    We all know Nimoy wasn't really Spock, that he could leave the costume at the door when he went home at night and be a human not a Vulcan.  

For the disabled it's too easy to allow our diagnosis to define us, to BECOME our ailment.   how often do you hear "i'm spina bifida",   "he's coeliac",   "she's Down's Syndrome" ?    

                            N O   NO   NO   NOOOO   !!!!!!

I HAVE spina bifida,  he HAS coeliac disease,   she HAS Down's Syndrome.

Semantics ??? perhaps.   but  i'd rather be a pedant than an illness !

We, of broken bodies, can't leave our costume behind, it's pinned to our shoulders and we drag it around behind us 24/7.   Please at least have the grace to allow us to be defined by our humanity not our disease.