What's So Special About The Special Olympics?

Bruce Jr. was about ten I think, when I took him to the local Special Olympics. He was excited about going, mainly because I had taken him out of school to go. When we got there, he was a little edgy about it all. At the time he had long blond hair (it was the 70’s) and the kids (some were not kids) kind of crowded around him wanting to touch his hair. He just stood there looking at me like “what do I do now?”. I got busy with something and ten minutes later Bruce had a bunch of kids around him and he was teaching them how to hold a baseball bat or something. It took just ten minutes for a 10 year old kid to be comfortable with people who were very different from him.

I have never really read a lot of sports columnists, but I did love to read Jim Murray (a long ago LA Times writer) and one of his columns about the Special Olympics was absolutely iconic, and I have tried to find it for the last few months because it was so great. He described these kids running a race which was pretty intense. One boy was just a little behind another boy when the other boy fell down. The kid who could have won the race, stopped right there to help his competitor up. Murray conjectured that in any other race with regular kids, this wouldn’t have happened. I read this column to my classes every year…fourth grade through eighth and scene was always the same….I couldn’t finish it, and some kid that wasn’t in much better shape than me would have to read the end of the column.

Just some thoughts about how important the Special Olympics is and how much they have to teach us.

Oh and one more thing…I have never in my entire life have seen such happiness on kids faces when they finish their event win or lose. It is amazing and wonderful.