SWEET CHILD O’MINE

14.06.04

Did I ever tell you how much I love kids? I don’t know how come I thought of writing this now but I’ve wanted for a long time to speak about the importance of living with kids or be a little one yourself. I think a lot of Maria-Nefeli lately (by the way, Konstantina, do you allow me to post the picture on the site?)

There are no creatures as cute as the little human beings who teach us every day so many things and who have a unique way of speaking out about even for the harshest of truths. As if they have found the way to accept everything as it is, exactly as a wise man that carries experience and lifetime knowledge would do.

No matter how curious children may be, it is their motive that proves them innocent. A child never asks something out of indiscretion. A child always asks questions in order to discover something new, related to something unknown or impossible to understand. When children learn, they always want to help and do whatever they can in order to make things right. Deep inside their heart, they believe that everything can be worked out. They can still dream and hope for everything; maybe because they know things that we, as adults, have forgotten; maybe because they see life unfolding in front of them like a huge carpet made of clouds. They have all the time to walk on it and screw it up or make it round where needed.

Every child sheds bright signs everywhere. It’s our job to make those signs brighter and give the children the encouragement they need in order to be always willing and full of ideas. Children carry ideas. They are drops of water that help develop the flowerpot of the world. They hold a gun altogether, a gun full of colourful plastic bullets, ready to bring down every trail of the injustice that smothers the outcasts of this planet.But their willingness is not enough. Their teachers and families too are always obliged to point out the right direction to the children who will be adults tomorrow and who will respect the difference of people only if they are taught to do so, thus fighting any kind of prejudice and dark notions of past ages.

I became aware of my love for children about a year ago, when I traveled across the cities of Crete in order to inform the schools of our situation, within the framework of the campaign for ‘2003 – European Year for People with a Disability’. You can’t imagine with how much love they welcomed me, how patiently they heard what I had to say and, finally, how agonized was their question whether or not I was in pain and if I could ever get well. Even though I explained them that I will never walk again, they insisted on wishing me good luck and asking me if there was something they could to help. ‘Talk about this to your friends and parents’ is what I told them. ‘We’ll do it, sir’ was their answer.

Those who believe that children don’t care are stupid. Some times they might be very strict in their judgment but when they get to know something they decide to do whatever they can in order to be part of the solution to the problem. The schools and the family are the places to find the incentives that children can use in order to change completely the future way of approaching the phenomenon of disability. That’s what we mean when we say: ‘it’s a matter of education’.

When I was younger, kids used to stare fiercely at me every time I went out with my mother while seating on my wheelchair. My mother got angry and said to the parents: ‘Tell your children not to stare at my son like that’. I was ashamed of this; of my mother who swore, not of how I looked like in the eyes of the children (I told you, I had no idea back then).
If I could, I would like to turn back time. To stand close to those children and explain them; help them understand.