Special has always been the polite slur between the kids in my family growing up, because it was Special Ed and there was the Special Ed bus. Here's CLUE to the sensitive types that keep wanting terms changed. KIDS WILL STILL MAKE FUN!

In my hometown, the special ed kids used to go to a separate school called The Ricker School, so you used to call kids "Rickers" as an insult. Later, they had their own room at the junior high - Room 111. So the term "111-ers" got thrown around. It's always going to be that way.

"Oh yeah, you're special -- special needs!!"

Ugh, flea, I'm seething for you. That's fist-through-the-wall enraging.

Oh god, flea. I feel you. You can't force them to do the only goddamned thing they need to get done, and yet when they don't do it, it affects SO MUCH MORE than just them.

Dear [loved one]:

If the consequences affect only you, then go fuck around as long as you like. When it affects me, then I eat your liver.

Lovens,

Teppy

"Oh yeah, you're special -- special needs!!"

This conversation can't help but bring to mind that Onion piece about sending "very special forces" to Iraq (including a photo of the short plane).

flea, I hear your pain. t waves fist of fury southeasterly

(And, yeah, the first time that slipped out after I left high school was a completely weird mashup of "I really shouldn't have said that" and "these people have no idea what I'm even talking about.)

Oh yes. It was sort of like when I realized that "The R-Wing" didn't mean the place where crazy people go in other cities. My mom always used to say I was sending her to the R -wing.

Also-- are you actually from Western NY (which I did not know at all) or are the BOCES elsewhere?

Nah, BOCES is a statewide program (or at least it was at that point, although I haven't thought of it in ages) -- I spent part of high school interned on Long Island.

Ah. I sort of always forget that NYC and the surrounding environs are, like, part of the same state!!! I R DUM.

Oh, flea. I've been there, in the sense that I watched my ex screw up his life, and therefore mine, despite my doing everything I could think of to help him and urge him on.

They think we're going to beat the record high for the day. I hate being part of weather records.