It;s an anagram.

Re-arrange the letters and you’ll get two different fruit.

Pádraig did it today and came up with Melon and Lemon. Not too bad, right?

A very good friend of mine today gave me the present of a book The Chicago Tribune called “The primer for a revolution”. It’s by Joseph P. Shapiro and is called “No Pity”. I started to read it and I didn’t want to stop. Right on the first page it made a point that I have not seen anywhere else been made so clearly and convincingly: that non-disabled people do not understand disabled. Taking a sentence from a tribute to a disabled disability rights campaigner: “he never seemed disabled to me, he was the least disabled person I ever met”, Shapiro says that times have changed. That “most people with disabilities and their families do not see there physical or mental limitations as a source of shame or as something to overcome in order to inspire others. Today, many proclaim that it is ok, even good, to be disabled.” He says that “taking pride in disability is a celebration of the differences among people that gives them a respectful understanding that all share the same basic desires to be full participants in society”.

After all, how would we react, asks Shapiro, if someone said to a black person “You’re the least black person I ever met”, or to a Jew, “I will never think of you as Jewish”, or to a woman, “You don’t act like a woman”.

My mind opened up when Pat said to me, when we were out for a walk for the first time with Pádraig in Hamburg: “Now let’s go shopping!” I thought “shopping????”. With Pádraig??? And I felt similar when we went to a restaurant for the first time, to a concert, to the cinema.

We know Pádraig shares the “same basic desires to be a full participant in society” with us. We have to be ready to allow that to happen.

What is is stoping us?