Online Community

For this assignment, I joined an online community for people with Cerebral Palsy. This is a disability that I was born with, but I don’t like to think of myself as disabled. As a person on the show “Extreme Makeover Home Edition” once said “These kids aren’t disabled, they are differently abled.” I like this terminology because it doesn’t say that we can’t do anything, we just do them in a different way than most people are accustomed to.
I didn’t feel weird about joining a group of people with this handicap. I have been open since an early age to discussing my situation with people who are curious. That way I can tell them about it without getting the usual stereotypical responses. I get the usual curious stares and kids that are more interested in my wheelchair rather than why I am in it.
It is refreshing to talk with others who are experiencing what you are. It’s great to be able to bring up questions to other members that have the startle reflex of being scared by loud, sudden noises or asking them how best to deal with getting their leg muscles to relax.
It took me some time to find the right group, but then I settled on one on the website www.meetup.com. There are several different types and varying levels of cerebral palsy. The type I have is known as spastic cerebral palsy. It primarily involves muscles in the legs and also deals with fine motor function. Mine is on the less severe end of the scale. I use a wheelchair most of the time to get around, but can also use forearm crutches when I am going somewhere there might be stairs or other obstacles not easily accessed by the wheelchair.
Computers can be our friends and they can also become our enemies. As Postman explains on page 118, “(Computers) place an inordinate emphasis on the technical processes of communication and offer very little in the way of substance.” They might help us get our message to many people around the world, but there is no real substitute for communicating with someone face to face. Computers make it hard to convey emotion as easy as it is to do in person.
With the vast amount of information available on the Internet these days, sometimes I miss having to search for things that don’t require a keyboard. There is something to be said for the hunt it takes to sometimes find the right information.
Discussion boards such as these provide a way for us to get the opinion and input of others without having to leave our homes. This is just another way that society is able to get what they want with the push of a button, or in this case the click of a computer mouse. Our world today is so used to answers at the tip of a hat, and in that way it seems we are becoming lazier because we get all of the credit for half the amount of work.