These Guys Are My Friends

"You are my friends..."
John 15:14
I watched the movie “The Ringer” the other day, and I approach- ed it with some real trepidation at first: Johnny Knoxville of “Jackass” fame? A movie about ‘fixing’ the Special Olympics? Gulp. I was amazed; the whole thing was handled with class, as the Special Olympians were neither ridiculed nor presented with the ‘tug-at-your-heart-sympathy-for-the-mentally-retarded”.

I got to thinking about my first real job in the field of Rehabilitation after I finished graduate school. I call it my basic training. I worked for the Russell Co. Day Training Center, a sheltered workshop for developmentally disabled adults in Phenix City, AL, a small town 30 miles to the east of Auburn (click here to read an interesting history of Phenix City). Please forgive the “white-outs” over the faces of my students, even though these pictures were taken around 1980, I still value confidentiality and want to protect their identity. I know it looks like something out of a 50's detective novel, but it is the only way I could edit these old pictures and share them with you. I just wish you could see their eyes. The opening picture shows a very ‘green’ hatter and some of his students at Six Flags Over Georgia on what was called “Handicap Day” back then. Since a number of the students had never been on a big bus before, I figured we would just browse by the coasters. Man, was I wrong. I had ‘em riding the Mindbender with me, a steel tube coaster that was state of the art back then. And I got paid for this “work”?

I learned so many lessons from those two years that I worked as the Training Coordinator for this workshop. That’s a fancy name for teacher, bus driver, food server, coach, and hopefully, friend. I was schooled about the unconditional love that God’s Word speaks of from my students every day back then. They did not have it in them to hate. Talk about merry hearts. It was called a workshop, but we had more fun in a day than any place I have ever worked.

Holidays were great, especially Christmas. Bill (all names are changed) did the Santa Claus thing every year and handed out the presents. And wow! The dancing! Annie (under the Santa, along with the first of many "chick co-workers" in the pic) and I would ‘chaperone’ the parties and have wonderful memories of these days. Young Damon got so excited dancing to “Car Wash” one night, he danced himself into the janitor’s closet and got tangled up with the buffer. No party was complete without Penny singing “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man” by Loretta Lynn. Funny thing, I had some students who had severe aphasia, but come Christmas time, they would chatter like chipmunks, and just as quickly go back into their quiet worlds after New Years.

I loved driving the van. Hot afternoons...stopping to say “hey” to all the mamas and daddies. Usually end up with some fresh turnip greens and cornbread, plump red ‘maters in season, and one mama would fix me up with Silver Queen corn. One student, Jimmy, (who could have been a member of the G. Pyle family) always had to ride shotgun, because it was his job to make the lights turn green. Ol' Jimmy was convinced that by pointing his finger like a gun and hollering, “PING!” he could get the light to change from red to green. So after about 40 seconds of “PING!” the light would glow green and Jimmy would turn to me and say, “I tol' you I’d get that light to go gween for you, Mawk!” After laughing too many times at this ridiculous theory of Jimmy’s, I finally explained that "THE LIGHT WAS GONNA CHANGE WHETHER YOU PINGED IT OR NOT!!" Jimmy winked at me and said, “I knowed that Mawk, I twicked you Mawk.!” The van erupted with laughter. Whose the teacher?

There was a great scene in the movie where Johnny Knoxville’s character and another character converse and the man refers to Johnny’s buds as “retards”. Johnny’s character, now deeply dedicated to his amigos, stands over the man and explodes: “DON’T EVER USE THAT WORD AGAIN, THESE GUYS ARE MY FRIENDS!” In a special feature interview, when one of the actors (with down syndrome) was asked what he thought of Johnny Knoxville playing the lead in this movie, he referred to this scene. He commented that he thought it was great, because the fans of “Jackass” may be those very ones using that word in referring to us. That scene may convince them differently. How insightful, I thought.

It is with this thought that I close. These guys were my friends. I have a little plaque that I still have on the wall in my office; and it means as much to me as anything on my "look at me" wall. It simply says, In appreciation, from your friends at Russell County Day Training Center. July 31, 1981. The use of words means something to me. That Jesus would call me His friend and that these folks echoed His sentiments causes me to swallow hard.

My work today is more administrative in nature, but I still have the opportunity as liaison counselor to visit a number of non profit Rehabilitation centers to get my “Jimmy-fix” frequently. It takes me back in time, and it brings me forward to the simple reality of God’s great love for us all.


Mark

Prov 17:22