A week or so ago, I linked to a story that ran in a Boston area paper. The story was written by a regular visitor to this site, a woman by the name of Chelsea Lowe. The story was about her mentally-handicapped brother and his journey into the American workforce. It was a really good article and it led to a few exchanges between Cheslea and I. In one of her notes to me, she shared the following story. I thought that you might enjoy it, so I asked for her permission to reprint it If nothing else, itll take your mind off the war for a little while.
Growing up, my brother had many friends in the “special ed” community. You should’ve seen his birthday parties. We held one at an ice cream parlor and one hyper energetic guest could run as fast as a bedbug and kept escaping. Another kid, Randy, was autistic and developed a fascination with the U.S. postal service. He used to send buckets of letters each day. Rob would get about nine at a time; mostly concerning directions to Randy’s house. I guess Randy ran out of stamps in short order and began substituting Chiquita banana stickers, “paid” labels from the supermarket, et cetera. His father answered the phone one to day to hear, “Is this Randall S—?” It was the postmaster general, investigating mail fraud. Randy ended up working for the post office and making rather a good living.
I love that story. I can picture every scene in my head and I can imagine just how cool it must be for Randy to actually work in the post office now On a sad note, it also occurs to me that I will probably never desire or love a job that much. (I have to turn everything around and make it depressing.)
Speaking of mental illness, did anyone happen to catch this story about former child actor Anthony Michael Hall being sued by the producers of his TV series, the Dead Zone, for not letting them know that he was mentally ill? He apparently went off his meds and wrecked havoc on the set, or at least thats what theyre saying. (I think that they should turn lemons into lemonade though, and just turn it into a reality series.)
Speaking of reality being more compelling than fiction, someone might want to do the same thing with Don Johnson, the supposedly well-endowed Miami Vice actor who was recently caught in Europe with something like $8 billion in what authorities think were laundered funds. The media has kind of dropped the story, but there’s got to be something there. Finding Don Johnson with eight billion dollars is like finding Todd Bridges from Different Strokes behind the controls of a UFO.
