Tale #12: The Cruelty of Exclusion

Tale #12: The Cruelty of Exclusion (A partner piece to 'Tale #2: The Cruelty of Inclusion') (Content Tags: Messing, wetting, diapers, humiliation, neurodivergence, treated as dumb, systematic injustice, bullying, forced seat-sniffing, ignorance) The injustice of it had always rubbed him raw; thresholds were one thing to balk over, but at what point did it become a matter of true discrimination? The school system's lack of resources shouldn't have become a punishment to him; his social development shouldn't have been so disgustingly stunted by the prejudices and laziness of a school board that couldn't be bothered. Perry Prince had spent the majority of his academic career in 'resource rooms', 'life-skill classes', and 'fundamentals remediation'. Fancy and safe words for what equated to being in the SPED hallway. Elementary, middle, and high school. The place he'd lived, which was due to no fault of his own, hadn't quite progressed along to the concept of 'inclusionary' education for those with additional needs. A disability deemed beyond the scope of general education was a one-way ticket to a bucket that was much too wide. The holes in the filter were too small, meaning even a moderate sized problem would get caught and moved. The diagnostic methodology had been less refined in his early youth, and conditions that would eventually be seen as more commonplace, were viewed with a skeptical eye. Perry had been just different enough, in just enough ways, for his parents to push for professional intervention as early as Kindergarten, and that'd been a wrap on the next thirteen years for him. Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, general anxiety, and a stunted size. And what was coming in to wrap those fatal five defects into a perfectly miserable bow? Issues with toileting. Four out of the five maladies, only really excluding the dyslexia, had made pottytraining a very tall order for him. It had nothing to do with comprehension, and later on, it would have nothing to do with willpower; the problem was with a matter of focus, a matter of nerves, a matter of physical development, and a matter of signals. He tended to hyper fixate on things, and he couldn't always parse the bodily signals that his bladder or bowels were trying to send him. His body was physically underdeveloped, possibly due to a premature birth, and his anxiety both irritated his bowels and stimulated his bladder. Ultimately, he was functionally incontinent. If he put all his efforts into moderating that aspect of his body, then maybe he could reduce his number of accidents, but ridding them completely was never going to be an option, at least not in his earlier days. Pull-Ups had been a consideration at some points, but they really just didn't have the capacity he needed. So he'd worn diapers his whole life: baby, toddler, kid, teenager, and ultimately as an adult. He got bigger, and so did they. So, being unfortunately stricken with such a lame litany of birthright gifts, it could be argued that he put off an appearance that suggested him to be entirely feeble. He was shrimpy, he was wimpy, and he was shitting in diapers. People saw him as a retard. That wasn't a fair perception by any means, but that was the truth. He was a quiet kid with weird interests, and he was pooping his pants long past the age of anyone else at school. In reality, Perry was quite bright. The only real educational hurdle had been his dyslexia, which had delayed his literacy by a couple of years, but he'd ultimately caught up and exceeded the expectations of his age group before the end of elementary school. He was naturally curious, and imaginative, so he soaked up every bit of information he could, like a sponge. His true wit was unimportant though. He could be as rigorous as he wanted with learning, but it wouldn't change his placement at all. The school system didn't care about the actual scope of his intelligence, or his ability to learn new things. A loquacious attitude with an impressive vocabulary? A predilection for natural sciences? Picking up pre-algebra a year before the normal kids would struggle with it? These were all impressive feats, sure, but none of them were the keys to his freedom from the den of dimwits. Whenever he'd first been recommend for SPED, back in the middle of Kindergarten, there had been three major milestones that he lacked to stay with his peers: First, and most obviously, was his lack of pottytraining. At the time, none of the kids in his class were even still in Pull-Ups or cloth trainers, and he completely dependent on diapers. Accidents could be tolerated, and he spent a lot of time getting changed in the corner, but he wasn't making any progress. Back then, his lack of toileting had partly been due to disinterest, which also hadn't helped his case. Second, and least important, was the matter of physical development. He was smaller than the rest of his classmates, and appeared more juvenile, which led to him getting picked on a lot. This had actually been something that his parents had considered red-shirting him over, but they'd ultimately decided against it. On the same note, and connected to various elements, was his distinct delay in coordination and dexterity; he was still operating on a three year old's level in those attributes. He was clumsy as hell, and he couldn't use scissors or work a zipper to save his life. Third, and lying somewhere in the middle in terms of importance, were his social issues. He barely talked, and whenever he did, it was too quietly and barely intelligible. He was a crybaby, and he got overly emotional about little things; he was probably good for an average of one tantrum or meltdown a week. He also struggled to make any friends, and his interests were still languishing in the shameful clutches of the nursery. He was always scared, always overwhelmed, and never on-task. Item by item, the school judged his shortcomings harshly, and they offered his parents few choices on how to proceed. Ultimately, he did get pulled from Kindergarten for a year, so that his parents could try to work on some of these failings: he attended speech therapy and physical therapy, he was given some time to better mature and grow, and there was an attempt at bettering his potty problems. Perry would return to school at six, a little better off than he'd once been, but it still wasn't good enough. During the year he'd been back at home, his parents had sought out professional help, and that's when the diagnosis came rolling in. So now he had a doctor's note to explain many of his issues; things should have been fine, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong. The earlier push for SPED wasn't just revisited, it was all but decided for him. The school only had to point at the AuDHD and the diapers to claim that they couldn't accommodate him in a normal classroom. His parents could either let him enroll in the special classes, or they'd have to find a private school that was meant to handle such things. His parents weren't dirt poor, but they weren't rich either. A private school wasn't just too expensive a cost, but it was also too far away from where they lived. The area they were in was definitely on the poorer side, right in the middle of the south, so the public school system was both underfunded and full of ignorance. The autism alone would have gotten him basically called a retard by half of the administration. Well, in a nicer way, but the sentiment would have been the same. Perry's parents weren't exactly blameless in all of this either. He was the middle child, and they oscillated between being too coddling and too negligent of his needs. They could have tried fighting harder for him, but they themselves underestimated his abilities, and they had more consideration for what would be easiest, rather than what would necessarily be best. The first couple of years in the special classes weren't as big of a deal to him. He didn't really know any better. He did quickly find out that the other kids in there were a lot dumber than him, and a lot less capable of evolving, but he didn't yet know he should be embarrassed to be associated with them. It was around third grade, whenever he would start looking on at the normal classes with envy. He'd see the cool projects they did, the interesting field trips they went on, and the milestones they were allowed to reach. Perry would glare down at the alphabet exercises and block puzzles with resentment, with the full knowledge that he'd mastered everything in the special room within the first six months of being in there. The lack of effort put into educating the 'dumb' kids was really quite atrocious. Half the time they would just pop in a tape for them to watch: Barney, Teletubbies, Wiggles, Dora, Sesame Street, or Veggietales. Was there value in those educational programs? Sure. Was Perry particularly interested or enriched by them? Not in the least. Complicating this matter was the stark divide between his school life and home life. He had far more freedom to act more age appropriately at home, to cultivate genuine hobbies and interests, and to be treated with a semblance of respect. His little sister was a brat, sure, but his older brother always treated him like he was a normal kid, regardless of his disabilities. So it felt like being sent into a daycare, whenever he had to go back to class. He went from being ostensibly an average eight year old boy, with a few niche issues, to being treated like an oversized toddler for eight hours a day. All his learning was done at home, all his real socialization was being done at home, and all his fun was at home. What value did SPED have for him? None at all. SPED was glorified babysitting, and of really poor quality at that. They made sure he was safe, and they changed his poopy diapers. That was it. It was a room without peers, without entertainment, and without respect or dignity. Every day he was trapped in there, he grew to further resent the system that would so cruelly exclude him from the kids for whom he could actually match wits with. Perhaps the worst thing was that the SPED room didn't just stunt growth, but it seemed to abhor it; every opportunity he gave himself to grow, that classroom would fervently try to stamp out, as if it was an ember that could spread into a devastating wildfire. He remembered that being the case whenever he got the chance to really improve his literary skills. Dyslexia had slowed him tremendously, and it wasn't until that too was diagnosed, that he was able to start playing catch-up; once he had momentum though, he darted past board books and golden books, and straight into chapter books. Shouldn't his teacher have been proud of him? To go from illiterate to nearly on par with the normal classes in such a small amount of time? She should have been, but she wasn't. It didn't come across that she was actively targeting to hinder him, but she also had no room in her lesson plan for an overachiever; the other kids weren't reading in there, they were still on the alphabet, and she wasn't about to make a separate lesson just for one boy. Her tone was completely dismissive and indifferent, whenever he pleaded his case to her, that he already knew what the dummies still couldn't grasp. The woman even had the nerve to become frustrated with HIM, for being a problem, whenever it was obviously he who should have been irate. "It's very nice that you can read, honey, but I need you to follow along with everyone else. Rushing ahead won't get you anywhere, if everyone else is moving at the same speed." A cloying voice like honey, but so bitter in actuality. That was the case all throughout his elementary experience, since he had the same teacher that entire time. She never let him prove his worth, she never saw him as anything else than an uppity dimwit who wanted to create hassles. He was so glad to be rid of her, whenever he was finally allowed to move onto junior high. The nightmare didn't end with a new school though, it only shifted. The middle school was no better off than the elementary school had been, and it was the same school board in charge, so it was really just more a change of venue, and a new teacher. Unlike elementary school, the middle school SPED room had an element of danger to it. It was still the same gaggle of mushbrains as before, but now they would send the 'emotionally unstable' kids to the class on occasion too. Middle school also meant the start of puberty for his fellow SPED dwellers, and that created emotional volatility all its own. The one shining star, even if imperfect, was his new teacher. Mr. Klein, who unlike his previous teacher, was a lot less involved in doing anything resembling academia. This was both good and bad: the good was not being stopped from bettering himself, while the bad was lackluster supervision for the chaos of the classroom. The worst example of this that he remembered, was when one of the kids, a large boy named Vince, had flipped out on Perry during the extensive 'play time' that the class had. The teacher had his goddamn headphones in, feet up on the desk, and a magazine in front of his face; he would be of no help in this crisis. Vince, or Vinny as he was mostly called, had always had some bad blood with Perry. Unlike most of the other dummies, he had somewhat of a jealousy streak inside of him, and maybe an ego problem, because he'd always gotten fussy at his classmate for showing everyone up in the brains department. This had been less of a problem in grade school, since the teacher hadn't allowed Perry many opportunities to shine, but it'd been a growing anger in their new classroom. Now, this event was important for another reason. It was nearing the end of sixth grade, and Perry had been begging for a chance to get out of the special classes. He was approaching an age where he could handle his own changes, and he knew he could pass whatever kind of intelligence test that they sent his way. The school administration had been mostly untouched, but they had finally relented and one of them had went to tell the SPED teacher that they'd be stopping by to observe Perry in class. The absentminded man had totally forgotten about this, but one person hadn't, and that had been the one person eavesdropping: Vincent. So on that day, Vincent had ripped the book out of Perry's hands, and he'd punched hin in the gut, sending him sprawling onto the floor. "You 'tink you so smarty! But you no smarty! You no smarty 'den me!" Such eloquence hadn't been all that was up his sleeve, or rather, his pantleg. With Perry rendered incapacitated, the bully had pulled both his pants and his target's pants to their ankles, so that the whites of their diapers were on full display. That was embarrassment enough for a boy like Perry, who was smart enough to feel true shame, but the punishment didn't end there. Vince squatted down on his haunches, hovering his padding right above his victim's nose, and then? He started to fart. There are few times in Perry's life, as a child or an adult, where he can remember feeling simultaneously so powerless and so degraded. He hadn't been nearly strong enough to stop Vince, and none of his peers had elected to help either; nobody had even bothered to notify the distracted teacher as to what was going on. Gas wasn't the end of it, no, it was just the start. Every sputtering toot was punctuated by a crackling plop, a crinkling admission of the weaponized diaper defecation going on an inch above his nostrils. Still in pain from the punch, Perry's had to watch the topography of the diaper change; he saw it become lumpy and distorted, he saw it sag with the heft of the filth that filled it, until it brushed the tip of his nose with its heated plastic. And then Vince sat down. Not because he'd slipped, or grown tired, but because he wanted the 'smart boy' to feel as dumb as he thought was deserved. The fumes engulfed Perry's olfactory senses, replacing the precious air with tainted pollutants, and Perry started to violently squirm under the weight of this injustice. In his thrashing about, his own bowels would follow suit. First it began with unchecked flatulence, muffled by the diaper and the carpet his bottom was fixed to, but then, as his wriggling became subdued, a geyser of molten mush would blast past his buttcheeks and work hard to pack the oversized Pampers full of his failure. Who saved him? Not the teacher, and not his classmates. The observer was who pulled Vincent off, and not to save Perry, but to scold the both of them for uncouth behavior. Perry was too emotionally spent to defend himself that day, and his claims of targeted assault would fall on deaf ears later on. The teacher was chewed out of his lacking supervision, but not nearly enough to make up for how badly he'd screwed up Perry's opportunity. He would spend the rest of middle school in that class. Lingering and languishing, and always fearful of attack from the diaper-dumping degenerate in the plastic helmet. By the end of freshman year in high school, he'd finally be allowed out of SPED. His self-advocacy had at last prevailed, and the administration could no longer ignore his complaints; he was ahead of most teens his age in every subject, and finally mentioning the words 'health discrimination' in regards to his incontinence, had nipped that part in the bud too. He'd be allowed to spend the last three years in normal classes, just like he had always dreamed of. The only problem? The exclusion didn't end with that barrier being broken down. It was a small town, and everyone had known him as a 'diaper-shitting retard' since Kindergarten. Nobody wanted anything to do with him, and not just his classmates, but his teachers too. His little squabble with Vincent? That hadn't been kept the secret it should have been, and that wasn't helped by the fact that his own pipsqueak ass was still getting physically manhandled by the jealous moron in the hallways. Hell, Vincent hated him then more than ever before, and he'd put on a repeat performance of the sixth grade incident in eleventh grade, when the audience was much larger. They continued to treat him like he was stupid, like a dirty-diaper loving pariah, up until the moment he was begrudgingly handed his diploma. And after that? Well, his parents weren't much better. There was no push for college, no push for him to get a real job. That was seen as too much for him. So now that's where his life was. Sitting at home in his shitty diapers, still playing the role of a child, at least until he could convince them he was something more than that. With another man-sized loaf pinching and settling in the back of his Abena, he had a feeling that things wouldn't be getting any better. Exclusion had ruined his life, it had been cruel, even after its mandate had come to an end.