On the TV show Parenthood the other night, the character named Max, a pre-teen who has Asperger’s Syndrome, was arguing with his gym teacher about participating in class.  Max wanted to sit on the sidelines instead of submitting himself to torment by his classmates. His teacher insisted that he play. Max pointed to a student who was sitting out, a boy in a wheelchair, and said “He’s sitting out-why does HE get to sit out?”

To which the teacher responded “He’s sitting out because he’s disabled.

(Of course when I saw that, my claws came out almost audibly, like Wolverine’s)

Max pushed the issue, saying “I’m disabled too. I have Aspberger’s.” And he sat next to the boy and became instant best friends. That’s what always happens, right? People with disabilities are ALL friends with each other, like all Canadians know each other, and Asians only date other Asians (sorry….a little Glee grudge.)

Anyway.

The gym teacher’s attitude that it’s normal or expected or acceptable for kids with disabilities to sit on the sidelines and play video games pushed my buttons. (the fact that the parents in the show didn’t address this issue with a meeting with school officials is the subject for another blog.)

Some years ago, when my now-18-year-old-daughter was in middle school, I went on a crusade to make sure she had as much physical education activity as possible. No, not just “physical activity”, but physical EDUCATION activity. I think I’ve written about it before, but here’s the short version: in elementary school, she was always included in PE. The teacher and her aide went out of their ways to adapt activities for her, to include her whenever they could. Middle school presented a host of barriers to such inclusion, among them the attitude of the PE director. We had huge meetings about PE in middle school, meetings with 17 people in attendance–just about PE–and ultimately resolved nothing. My position was that if she wasn’t going to be able to actively participate in PE–get her muscles moving, raise her heartrate, do some cardiovascular activity, then I wanted them to pay for a pass for her to use a local pool to do her PE offsite.

During the enormous, 17-person meeting, the PE director at the middle school said some of the most offensive things I’ve ever heard in defense of the school’s resistance to my plan, including:

“My wheelchair kids LOVE to be the referee!”

“My kids in wheelchairs LOVE to keep score!”

“watching PE (from the sidelines) will teach her what she needs to know about the different sports, so later on when she goes to parties, she’ll know what’s going on.”

Yes, the PE director really said that. PE class is important for teaching kids in wheelchairs enough about sports to have conversations at Super Bowl parties to be held sometime in the future. See, *I* actually thought PE was important for giving kids regular physical activity, to establish a habit of being active so that later in life, the kids would have a better shot at staying fit. But no, according to this PE director, the goal is to give kids something to talk about over nachos while watching Da Bears lose.

But it’s funny how things turn out.

Despite never having been in a flag-football game, never enduring one single burpee, never having dodged one single ball, my daughter is now the biggest sports fan in the entire house. She receives text alerts on her phone about college football and basketball games. She watches in rapt attention every game of the Big Ten season, wears her team colors every week; can recount in detail the Little Giants play that won the game for Michigan State over Notre Dame; watches basketball games all by herself, keeping track of three point shots and fouls and offensive rebounds. She keeps the Chicago Blackhawks season schedule on her personal calendar. She can explain icing to her brothers (who need help occasionally) and tapes every Blackhawks game, even the ones she watches, and updates her dad during games he can’t watch. She is our family’s Bob Costas.

How can this be? How could she have learned the first thing about sports without having been the scorekeeper in gym? Surely it’s some kind of miracle!

Well, no. My daughter learned the same way girls have been learning about sports for generations: from her family. I come from a basketball family, my husband is Canadian, and we’ve learned to love Big Ten football. We watch football, basketball, tennis, cycling, and are avid (rabid?) Blackhawks fans, and my daughter jumped on the bandwagon and took over the steering wheel. That’s just who she is.

So every time my daughter tells me about an upcoming hockey game, and reminds me to clear my schedule so we can watch, I think of that idiot PE director and her narrow view of disabled kids as servile and inferior. The school wasted five years arguing against my daughter forming fitness habits to take her into adulthood because they couldn’t see my daughter as anything but a kid in a wheelchair.

And thanks to our amazing PT, my daughter now swims twice a week and has land-based PT that raises her heart rate, engages her cardio-pulmonary system, and gets her out of her wheelchair in weight-bearing activities three days a week. My kid has abs of steel, and is probably more fit that most of the kids in PE class.

That PE director can take her shiny silver whistle and shove it up her ass.

Meg Currell is pretty proud of her sports-minded daughter and two artistic sons.

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