Dear Lauren,

It's almost Halloween. Can you believe it? Feels like the year's been taking forever to get to this point.

I only have a few minutes, so I'll try to keep today short.

I started rereading this one book. It's called Hummingbird and it's about this girl who has OI. Basically, her bones are like candy and she has to go everywhere with a wheelchair.

I forgot how bad it was. Not the book, it's pretty good, just the way people treat her because of her medical condition. It's absolutely horrible, yet there's a part of me that fears that I would treat her like that too.

Olive, the main character, recently started attending public school after years of homeschooling. The person that looks after her and helps her and stuff won't even let her open the door on her own. It's like, do you really think turning a doorknob will break a bone?

And then the Madeleines treat her like a toddler. "Oh, you put your name in glitter on the back of your wheelchair? My sister did the same thing to her backpack. She's in 3rd grade." And then they went on to talk to each other about how Mrs. Pigeon, Olive's helper/babysitter puts the disabled kids with them. The only reason she's there is because Mrs. Pigeon thinks that the library, where all of Olive's new friends eat lunch, is too dangerous for her and the Madeleines are already nice enough. Really? I wouldn't call making fun of the new kid "nice."

And then Olive accidentally backs into someone, making Mrs. Pigeon come running, shouting, "CAREFUL, SHE'S FRAGILE!" Not to mention she already pushes the wheelchair about as slow as a snail.

I get that she has a higher chance of breaking a bone, but seriously? Now you're just treating her like a piece of glass that could break at the slightest touch.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the theater teacher. Olive does a great job trying out for the lead role in the school play (at least, I don't think I remember her messing it up), but instead you give it to the most popular girl in school. And then the theater teacher proceeds to put Olive right below the stage and then criticizes her for every little thing. Sometimes, Madeleine will do something wrong, but who gets in trouble for that? It's certainly not Madeleine. I'm pretty sure that's a type of discrimination.

Another thing that happened today. I asked that person about mentioning their dad's friend being Christian when talking about her death. I admit, I did sound a little rude, but I didn't mean it. They replied back politely saying that they mentioned it because it was a big part of her personality, how most people with her beliefs is expected to have a long life and peaceful death, and highlighted how she was a good person.

Now, not every Christian is a good person just like how not every Jew, Muslim, whatever the word is for a person who's religion is Hindu (Hinduism?) is a good person. But their explanation made sense to me and I could see that they truly didn't mean anything rude by it.

I do wish I had never asked though because someone said that, I was in fact, very rude and I should just chill out. I tried to explain to them that I was doing a project on the holocaust so I'm trying to be extra aware of any rude comments people might make regarding someone's race, religion, sexuality, etc. It's reminded me that this type of stuff is unacceptable, and that the area I live in has had a large Muslim population ever since they built the new however-you-spell-the-place-of-worship-for-people-that-practice-the-Islamic-religion (mosc? No, that doesn't look right.), so instead of people randomly start preaching about Jesus and God and all that stuff, like my asl teacher does and it's really annoying when I'm talking about science that has nothing to do with her beliefs, they try to be respectful of that like not showing a movie in school promoting Christianity (*cough* PE *cough* actually, it wasn't as bad because they mostly talked about God, but still! What would they have done if there was a Hindu there? Also, I love y'all's myths. They're way more interesting than what they force us to learn. So a guy got eaten by a whale. What's so special about that? The most interesting thing in the Bible is the talking donkey. And the video of the pastor who stole a woman's food because she honked at him in the McDonald's drive through lane. I mean, it's not technically in the Bible, but it sure is funny!)

Wow, that's a long paragraph. Sorry about that.

I truly do wonder though. Am I making a big deal out of nothing?