Words that you will often see on this site are “retard” and “retarded.” Every time I publish an article that contains either or both of these words, I am deluged by hate mail from people who seem to be genuinely upset. They’re just words, folks!
In other words, these retards are retarded for being upset.
I don’t consider either of these words to be objectionable. After all, “retard” is a musical term. The term, apparently dating all the way back to 1426, refers, in part, to slowing something down. That is likely how the word came to refer to someone who is slow, i.e. stupid.
Remember, it wasn’t too long ago when we could say someone is “mentally retarded.” Now, because we live in a society of snowflakes, we have to say something like, “a person with intellectual disabilities.” No, I liked “mentally retarded” better.
Back in high school, there was a student who was…well…retarded. She was insanely stupid and slow. She was an office aide, as was I. She couldn’t handle even the simplest of tasks. As an example, she constantly struggled with operating the photocopier. Hell, I grasped that concept in, what, fifth grade?
I’m no rocket scientist, but I was able to perform my duties as am office aide as well as a library aide. I was teaching other students and even a few teachers about the internet, something that was relatively new back then. In fact, they just started laying down ethernet cords in the ceilings of the hallway in May of 1997.
Anyway, I was able to handle things without being a Rhodes Scholar, so I was insanely frustrated by her inability to do something so simple as take a hall pass to a classroom to get a fellow student out to go to the vice principal’s office. As such, I didn’t hesitate to call her a retard and when other students asked how stupid she was and I told them, she was mocked even more mercilessly.
Do I regret adding fuel to the fire as opposed to sticking up for her? No. I enjoyed being one of the provocateurs.
I mean, seriously…she broke down crying in the hallway after not being able to remember how to transfer a phone call. I don’t know why she couldn’t handle a task that a sixth-grader from the adjacent school could do without a second thought.
She ended up dropping out and disappearing within a week of senior year starting. I don’t know if I was one of the people who broke her, but if she couldn’t handle high school, I shudder to think how the real world saw her.
If anyone wants to single me out for participating in this, I would simply point out that we all called her a “retard” or we would say that she was “retarded.” She was used to it because we all (okay, most of us) called her those so words. Why she suddenly ran away is beyond me. Some of us shrugged it off and chalked it up to her not being able to handle the real world.
Actually, that’s not true. I know how it went. We found out that three weeks after dropping out like a punk, she committed suicide in a rather unpleasant manner. Let’s just say that when they found her body, it was a bloody mess. And I mean that word literally, not in the British swearing context. I know this because she was a neighbor who lived three buildings down. We took the same bus.
One day she was there and the next day, her building was surrounded by first responder vehicles. Word got around real fast. This was well before Androids and iPhones, so random people taking pictures wasn’t a thing. A few days later, one of those forensic cleanup companies came along to clean up the mess.
Did I lose any sleep over her suicide? Not for a moment.
If those words offend you in any way, may I suggest that you stay off the internet, because you’re being retarded. And there you have it!