Categories Shmategories....

Last Saturday morning, I was struggling to combine drinking coffee and reading the newspaper after a night that was too short. Because of my condition – fatigue and nothing more, I can assure you – it was easy to ignore stories about war, politics, the economy, so decided to focus on the sports section.

Unfortunately the sports section doesn’t take long to read, and so as the level of coffee descended in my mug, I looked for something else.

Sure enough, there was a perfect Saturday morning column about a young man who had been elected “Homecoming King” at his high school. For those of you not from these parts, “Homecoming,” at least in my youth was an excuse to throw off normal strategies of dress and attire, go to a football game which was followed by a dance. Normally, this sequence of events took place after the team had played an “away” game, but now Homecoming occurs when it occurs, very much the way national holidays now occur on Mondays when a holiday is more convenient, but that’s another topic for another time.

Anyway, the young man in question attends most athletic events, has taken time to learn the names of hundreds of his fellow students, and enjoys attending school.

The point of the column was that he was described as “developmentally delayed,” and so his being chosen by a vote of his peers was seen as an acknowledgement of the contributions of someone who is classified as different in some ways from most other students. And so our hearts are warmed, and we turn the page and life goes on.

But wait a minute.

Every day we allow categories to simplify our lives too much. In the first paragraph, I said I was tired, but you might have thought I was dealing with a hangover. Big difference, and in my book two glasses of wine and four and a half hours of sleep makes you tired, not hungover.

We’ve all heard the terms - dummy, retard, handicapped, challenged. Or how about spic, dago, fag, faggot, queer? Or the derogatory racial terms? Or perhaps liberal, conservative, communist, fascist, socialist? Or terms that describe learning disorders along a nearly endless continuum…

We are all more subtle than the words others might use to describe us and that we might use to describe ourselves to others. The late John Gardner was once asked in what pigeonhole he might fit. His reply was that he didn’t really know, just one with his name above it.

Returning to our young man, the homecoming king, I wonder just who might be “developmentally delayed” – It seems he and we both lack certain talents and skills we might like to have, and the only difference is that some of us have may more of a choice in the matter.

Time to rethink that pigeonhole thing we do.