Are you OK?
March 25, 2008 (Tuesday)
Twenty-three years ago in the Ukraine, a normal 14-year-old boy had brain surgery. A side effect of the surgery was damage that has resulted in a constant supply of growth hormone. He has not stopped growing. At 37 years of age, he is now 8’ 5” tall and has a 17” foot. He recently met the smallest man in the world, who is about 2’ 6” tall.
Each one of these men has problems the rest of us don’t have, because we have designed an environment for people of average size. If everyone in the world were 9 feet tall, the gentle giant in the Ukraine would have no problems, other than those associated with his own personal health. The same would hold for the man of small stature if everyone else was also 2 1/2 feet tall..
One of the old science fiction programs had a half-hour skit in black and white TV a number of years ago. The lady on the hospital bed was surrounded by doctors and nurses wearing surgical masks. The patient’s head was wrapped in bandages. The occasion was the removal of the bandages so that the rebuilding of the patient’s face could be revealed. Surgery had been done because she was so horribly disfigured from birth that she had many emotional problems as a result. This surgery was to be the answer to her deepest longings to look like others. As the last bandage was removed, a collective gasp filled the room, followed by moans. The surgery had been a failure. The camera focused on the patient’s face. She was a beautiful lady with a lovely face. Then, the surgical masks were removed from the medical team’s faces, showing them to be horrible manifestations of incomprehensible ugliness. Yet they were normal, and she was considered disfigured.
I wonder how many times in our lives we have considered some people abnormal when in fact they were the ones who were OK.