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By Root 194 0

class, usually near the radiator, there will always be a child with a vacant expression. Every time he gets up or opens his mouth to answer a question, the others know they’re going to laugh. His answers are always completely random, because he hasn’t understood the question, he never will. Sometimes the teacher is sadistic and probes the child further, playing to the gallery, livening things up and raising his own ratings.

The child with the vacant expression, standing there in the middle of his giggling and whooping classmates, doesn’t want to make anyone laugh, he doesn’t do it on purpose, quite the opposite. He’d like not to make people laugh, he’d like to understand, he tries hard to, but despite his efforts he says stupid things, because it’s not within his scope to get the point.

When I was a kid I was the first to laugh; now I feel tremendous compassion for that child with the vacant expression. I think of my own two boys.

Luckily, no one will actually be able to make fun of them at school. They’ll never go to school.

I’ve never liked the word “handicapped.” It’s got depressing overtones of the expression “cap in hand.”

I don’t like the word “abnormal” either, especially when it’s hooked up with “child.”

What does “normal” mean? How we should be, how we ought to be, in other words average, standard-issue. I don’t really like average things, I prefer things that aren’t average, things that are above average and—why not?—below; different, anyway. I prefer the expression “not like other people.” Because other people aren’t always that great if you ask me.

Not being like other people doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not as good as them, it just means being different from them.

What would it mean if a bird wasn’t like other birds? It could just as easily mean a bird with a fear of heights as one that could sing all of Mozart’s flute sonatas without the score.

A cow that’s not like other cows might know how to make phone calls.

When I talk about my children I say they’re “not like other people.” It leaves a glimmer of doubt.

Einstein, Mozart, Michelangelo … they weren’t like other people.

If you’d been like other people, I would have taken you to museums. We could have looked at great paintings together, Rembrandts, Monets, Turners, and more Rembrandts …

If you’d been like other people, I would have given you recordings of classical music and we could have listened to them together, first Mozart, then Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart again.

If you’d been like other people, I would have given you loads of books by Prévert, Marcel Aymé, Queneau, Ionesco, and more Prévert.

If you’d been like other people, I would have taken you to the movies, we could have watched all those old films together, Chaplin, Eisenstein, Hitchcock, Buñuel, and more Chaplin.

If you’d been like other people, I would have taken you to smart restaurants, I would have given you Chambolle-Musigny to drink and then some more Chambolle-Musigny.

If you’d been like other people, we would have played tennis together, and basketball and volleyball.

If you’d been like other people, we would have climbed the bell towers of Gothic cathedrals together to have a bird’s-eye view.

If you’d been like other people, I would have bought you the latest clothes, so you could be the best looking.

If you’d been like other people, I would have driven you to parties with your girlfriends in my old convertible.

If you’d been like other people, we would have had a huge reception for your weddings.

If you’d been like other people, I would have had grandchildren.

If you’d been like other people, I might not have been so afraid of the future.

But if you’d been like other people, you would have been like everyone else.

Maybe you wouldn’t have achieved anything in school.

You’d have been a couple of delinquents.

You’d have taken the mufflers off your scooters to make more noise.

You’d have been unemployed.

You’d have liked Jean-Michel Jarre.

You’d have married dumb broads.

You’d have gotten divorced.

And maybe you’d have had handicapped children.