The Unkindest Cut
A young boy's poignant question about inclusion and dignity sheds light on the treatment of people with disabilities in our community.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Boys, why are you so thoughtless? Learn to govern your tongues. A coarse jest will ofttimes rankle in some sensitive, suffering soul, causing it to lose all its sweet hope and truthfulness. I witnessed the other day a pathetic incident. A little hunchback boy was roughly pushed out of a game with these words: 'Go away, there is no room for a hunchback here.' The poor little chap came to me with a look of despair in his sad eyes. 'I wonder,' said he, 'if there will be any room for a hunchback in heaven.' Boys, is not this a whole sermon in itself?
“I wonder, said he, if there will be any room for a hunchback in heaven.”
This 1894 reflection on the exclusion of a child with a physical disability echoes contemporary conversations about accessibility, neurodiversity, and how we teach children (and ourselves) to embrace difference in public spaces.
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