1-07-2025 4:24am

Paper Boy Provides Insight into Author's Sentiments

Lesley Misko Editor

by Craig Bennett*

Dick was a local paper boy who used to hang around the corner at the end of the block where I lived and enjoy the company of the younger kids walking home from the elementary school a couple of blocks away. Younger than he was, that is. Much younger. I don’t know how old Dick might have been at the time, but he was already showing signs of a beard enough to need a shave now and then. His voice may not have reached its full adult depth, but he didn’t sound like a kid anymore. I’d guess he was at least in his late teens, and possibly even a little beyond twenty.

Dick was “retarded.” He had two or three paper routes that gave him more pocket money than the average kid had at any given time, and he apparently used it to make simple purchases that would ordinarily have appealed more to someone half his age or slightly less. When he had with him some small toy or other novelty that he had just bought at one of the stores down on Main Street, he would demonstrate it and share it around to let those present have a crack at making it do whatever it did. He was a very pleasant, easy-going sort of fellow and was popular with the kids. They liked him, and he liked them.

Then a day came when there weren’t many of us hanging around at that corner, and Dick showed up with a small balsa wood glider. Even though it was almost small enough to fit into the palm of an adult’s hand, it was a biplane. When assembled, it would have two wings, one over the other, the lower one being slightly shorter than the one above it. I was just a little stunned when Dick came over to me and asked me if I knew how to put the thing together.

Its assembly was simplicity itself. It was a toy designed and produced for kids, and the average ten-year-old should have had no difficulty in putting it together so that it would fly. It seemed that what was giving Dick the problem was the additional wing. The lower wing was slipped through a slit in the fuselage until it stuck out to an equal distance on both sides of the airplane. Then there were two “H”-shaped struts that supported the upper wing and connected it with the lower. All one had to do was to secure the struts in place by placing them on their long sides on the lower wing and looping a short rubber band over one end of the protruding arm of the H, under the wing, and over the end on the other side. You could figure that out just by looking at the pieces and comparing them with any biplane (they were not uncommon in those days) or picture of one that you had ever seen. But that was just a little too much for Dick. I put it together for him in probably little more than a minute—and he was happy as a child with a new toy.

I had known that something wasn’t quite right with Dick. We all did. And I had some very general idea of what “retarded” meant. But I had never been confronted with a close, live encounter of how it actually affected the person who suffered from it until Dick—who was practically a full-grown adult—asked me if I could help him put that simple child’s toy together. I thought about that for a long time afterward. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. What it meant, I had to realize, was that from the standpoint of intellectual functioning, Dick was as mature as he was ever going to get; and he had reached that point quite a few years ago. He would always apprehend and understand the world at the level of a child of seven or eight, or very little more. He would never really grow up inside his head; only outside, in his body. Someone would have to look after him for the rest of his life because a child no older than his mind was could neither understand nor manage the responsibilities of an adult alone in the world. He was simply trapped for the rest his life in a mind that would never grow beyond where it had peaked out somewhere years before I ever knew who he was.

I felt a great sadness sweep over me. Dick was a nice guy. He didn’t deserve to be sentenced to “mental childhood” for the rest of his life. I think now of the words from the Bible: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Dick, I realized, would never really become a man, would never really put away childish things. And I have remained deeply saddened for all those like Dick who will never be able to put away childish things because they will never really become men or women. They will, at a most fundamental level, always be children, confused by things that the rest of us can understand, frightened of things that the rest of us can understand, lost where the rest of us can find our way—and alone when the rest of us can find community and relationship among others like ourselves.

It wasn’t until several more years had gone by and I was a good deal older before I began to understand some more of the above. It occurred to me that we feel sorry for disabled people largely according to what has provided us with the greatest joy and satisfaction in our own lives. Good athletes, for example, probably feel the most sympathy for those who are physically handicapped and can’t run, jump, throw a ball, or engage in the kind of physical activity that gives the athlete so much enjoyment. Serious artists probably feel most sorry for the blind, who cannot see the beauty all around them that gives the artist so much delight. Musicians and those who love music most likely feel sorriest for the deaf, who cannot hear the beautiful sounds that can transport the listener into whole other realms of emotional sensation.

Looking at my own situation, I realized that what really provided me with the greatest satisfaction was understanding things: gathering pieces of the puzzle through reading, doing, and listening to those who had “been there, done that,” and putting them together in a way that yielded a coherent picture of some aspect of the world, or human behavior, or another sort of mystery that had long been something of a puzzle to me. So, although I feel compassion for the blind, the deaf, and the physically handicapped, I probably feel the deepest sympathy for those who will never be able to understand in the way or to the extent that I myself am able to. For that—thank goodness—is actually the greatest pleasure and satisfaction of my own life.

* Craig H. Bennett, author of Nights on the Mountain and More Things in Heaven and Earth, available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and most book stores.