Comments on: “Kid Hero Saves Teacher”

By: The Integral

The Integral — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:51:41 +0000

Andrea: I read about that, and I totally agree that she was a hero for her mother. Whether or not she fully understood the situation has more to do with her young age than her disability, but I believe she did understand pretty well. Kids, all kinds of kids, can say/do/think of/understand the darndest things. Darndest in this case meant life-threatening…..for her mom. It can mean whatever the situation calls for. Certainly this instance gives that old saying a whole new meaning, imho (the saying that kids say the darndest things…..)

By: Evonne

Evonne — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:58:35 +0000

Andrea: Thanks for the article. I have to wonder if it was really the cops who were skeptical, or if it was the reporter. I can sort of imagine the reporter saying something to the effect of, “Learning disabled? Well, then, can we really know for sure if she knew what she was doing?” and the cops answering that, of course, nobody can know for sure.

Man, that whole situation depresses the hell out of me. It also bothers me deeply that the mother jumped out of the car but left the little girl there . . . deep sigh for all of humanity . . .

By: andreashettle

andreashettle — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:29:07 +0000

Here’s another story that has some of the same problems as the above:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/18/hero.kid.ap/index.html

Basically a little girl (7 years old) saves her mother’s life by bodily flinging herself between her Mom and bullets. She is described as learning disabled (though it is not clear from the story if they mean some specific area learning disability, such as dyslexia etc, or if they mean intellectual disability in the way “learning disabled” is used in countries like the UK; the cops at least seem to be assuming the latter).

The line in this story that annoys me is a mention that the cops are not sure the girl really knew what she was doing because of her disability. Her Mom and her classmates all seem convinced that she is a hero and are treating her like one. But the cops are skeptical.

In my mind, if there is a question here, it should be based on her age. Most children that age have only a fuzzy conception of death (I know I did) and weak ability to understand the full consequences of their actions. So she might have read the situation as dangerous and wanted to protect her Mom, but might not have fully understood the life and death aspects of it, if that makes any sense. But whatever her level of comprehension, the story says she shouted, “Don’t hurt my Mom” when she flung herself onto her mother, so it seems pretty clear to me that there was a protective instinct in play. So I’m not sure why the cops would be so wary of claiming her as a hero: they seem to reacting more from their assumptions about disability than they are to the actual facts of the case. At her age, disabled or not, she was hero enough. And I think this is another example of a story where the girl’s disability was not really that relevant to the story except as the basis for the cops trying to discredit her ability to understand the situation.

By: Krista

Krista — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:55:38 +0000

It makes me angry when the media has to mention someone’s disability, even when it has no relevance to the story. It would have been ok if the reporter had included as side note, such as Mountain Rose’s above, about how this boy’s heroism goes against the mmyth that people who have autism also have cold, uncaring hearts. But no, it wasn’t a constructive commentary like that; it was just “amazing”. Ugh!

By: Ivan

Ivan — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:24:04 +0000

smelling in dreams is possible, I remember one or two times at least………..

Athena remembers a dream in which hot rice fell on her leg. It smelled like fresh warm rice………hard to describe it.

Athena felt like a hero last night for enduring a sensory cacophony (it was HORRIFIC!) to hang out and eat dinner with people at a fellowship gathering for our Honor Society……that’s how she described it………cried herself to sleep though.

By: bint alshamsa

bint alshamsa — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:56:34 +0000

I really do hate that when people say I’m a hero because I’ve done what it takes for me to preserve my own life…but, hey, if it gets someone to buy me beers, then I’ll let them do it. ;)

By: Evonne

Evonne — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:31:12 +0000

Definitely smell in dreams. So dependent on smell, in fact, that I could probably be convinced that my dreams really were in black and white, and I was just *smelling* the colors.

By: Joel Smith

Joel Smith — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:49:49 +0000

I don’t think I’ve ever smelled in dreams, although I’ve certainly felt in them. And yes, there’s color in them.

Until I was an adult, there wasn’t ever people in them though.

By: Ettina

Ettina — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:38:59 +0000

I can’t smell in dreams.
Forget black-and-white – I’ve never had a dream that *didn’t* have vivid colors, regardless of how ‘relevant’ they are.
My dreams consist mostly of a silent movie with sort of thought voice-over/subtitles. What I mean is that I don’t hear anything (or see the words written) but I *know* what is said. Smell and taste are absent, touch is mostly absent as well. Pretty much my dreams are like my memories in sensory form.

By: Norah

Norah — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:38:58 +0000

Oh definitely you can smell in dreams, and I wish you couldn’t, because it’s been pretty disgusting for me in some of the more macabre dreams I’ve had. And you can feel in them too…