That first day back at school was a nightmare of anxiety and fear. Here I was re-entering high school a virtual stranger. What was going on in my friends’ minds? Would I be accepted? The unknown lay ahead. It scared me to no end.
My first memory of that returning day included going to the cafeteria with a couple of girls, Carmen and Kathy. On the way back to the school, I passed right where a group of my male classmates were hanging out. I recall walking past them, head down. When I went past I looked back at them. I couldn’t tell who was who and if they were even looking at me. It was awkward. I never want to go through anything like that again.
The remainder of my sophomore year was a blur of good and bad times. While there were some students and a few teachers who helped me through those tough times, I was mostly a novelty to the school. Here was a visually impaired student. One of a kind. Sometimes it became cruel and I was called such names as “el Blind Man” or some other students would say, “How many fingers can you see?” The joke was they were flipping me off. I tried to laugh it off and try to join in on the laughter. In the end I feel more emotional damage was done to me by not sticking up for myself.
Even a few teachers joined in on the fun. While in a science class I was chatting with a student and she said I was faking my vision loss. She was joking. But then the teacher heard and chimed in from the front of the class, “That’s what some people are saying.” I looked at him and said, “Yeah, I purposefully hit desks so people can laugh at me.” That was one of the most insensitive comments anyone’s made. And it was a teacher.
The school was ill-equipped to handle a visually impaired student. These were the days before the Americans with Disabilities Act. Nothing was in place for me. I ended up having my Visual Tech machine placed in the In-School Suspension room near the office. I guess there was nowhere else to accommodate me. So I spent endless hours in that room with these “delinquents,” talking to them and occasionally getting help from them. Sometimes that little room, which was about ten-feet-by-ten-feet, was hot. The air conditioning window unit would fail and I paid the price along with all the students in that room. It was extremely uncomfortable.
But there were those students and faculty that truly helped me out and made life tolerable for me. Some students, like Rudy C., would help me take tests in that small room. Other students, like Lamar S., made life fun in the classroom and made me feel accepted and even protected me from the bullying element. Some teachers accommodated me as much as they could and encouraged me. Jim Clark offered to take me in as a student in his yearbook class, even though I had no experience in yearbook. Janie. Lopez, Grace Lopez and Nidia Rodriguez were among other teachers who made life easier and supported me while in high school. These students and teachers are a big part of how I survived high school as a visually impaired student.
I survived that first unsure year back in high school and continued through the remaining two years of schooling. Learning still was difficult and adjustments were made. I ended up taking “easier” classes than I wanted to, but there was no way around that. Some bullying still persisted and some students saw fit to insist on making fun of my vision. But I overcame and in May 1989 I graduated in the middle third of my class of 92 students.
The teenage years are some of the most difficult of a person’s life. Chemicals are surging, hormones are raging, pimples are popping up everywhere, we want to be accepted and we want to be independent. Then add on a sudden vision loss and those years are compounded a hundred fold. Feelings of isolation, anxiety, fear and sadness all rose to the surface. I wanted so badly to be accepted yet my vision loss seemed to set me back even further. As a teenager with a newly acquired disability all I could do was go with the flow and hope for the best and take my lumps along the way. And that’s what I did.
- Roel -
(Part 4 of 4)
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