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My first prom
I went to my first prom last night and had the time of my life.
My friend Tim Ellsworth and I were invited by Todd Perry, Executive Director of the Pujols Family Foundation to attend their third annual prom for young adults with Down syndrome:
Get dressed up and boogie! After such a successful event last year we had to this again! This event will be invitation only to people with Down syndrome, ages 16 and older. The Dance will be held at the Crowne Plaza in Clayton on October 23, 2009.
Though Albert had elbow surgery just this week, he and his wife Deidre lit up the room with beaming smiles, taking great joy in the fun everyone was having.
Special guest Fredbird, the St. Louis Cardinals’ mascot, led a dance line with hundreds of super-smiling kids joining in behind him.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographed the event, and put some pics on the front page of the Saturday edition. They can be seen online here. I even got snapped in the background of photo #5 as I came in the door.
You have never seen so many people have so much fun as when you get 350+ Down syndrome teens and young adults into formal wear, and then turn them loose on the dance floor.
For me, the highlight of the evening was when I was singled out for a “couples dance” by a new friend of mine (see picture above).
There is profound joy in seeing the image of God displayed in the faces and lives of these kids.
back to top20 Comments to “My first prom”
This reminds me of Dale Roger’ book about the blessings of her “Angel” with Downs syndrome. I had a cousin Sven with Downs syndrome who was a huge blessing to family and friends. When he loved you, he REALLY loved you and protected you! He grew up to surpass his mother’s size in all respects and am told that this led to her premature death. But Tante Agot would not ever have done anything diffently. They both were a smiling reminder of God’s perfect love through what we might consider strange and mysterious ways. It isn’t hard for me to imagine him happily dancing the night away. Angels unawares – God bless them – and He does – and they bless us.
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We can learn a lot about being happy from them. They know what’s important.
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Excellent experience–fine post. Thanks.
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Scott,
What an honor to be there – The picture of you and the lovely young lady is a treasure. Thank you for sharing this wonderful story.
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That’s nice! I know a couple of Down’s Syndrome kids and they’re the happiest people I know.
Joe Biden came under fire in Sept 2008 for attacking Sarah Palin on abortion and slamming her on the birth of her son, who has Down syndrome. Is Biden not the stupidest vice president in history?
In June of 2009, Sarah Palin gave a speech criticizing the culture of abortion that would eliminate unwanted pregnancies.
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Xion, this doesn’t really seem necessary here: “Is Biden not the stupidest vice president in history?”
Indeed, Down syndrome children and adults are the happiest, sweetest gifts from God. And yet so many of these innocents are killed in the womb, with parents never knowing what a gift they refused.
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Cheryl D Xion, this doesn’t really seem necessary here: “Is Biden not the stupidest vice president in history?”
Thanks for the criticism. You’re probably right. Biden’s criticism of Palin for finding joy in raising a developmentally disabled child isn’t stupid. I also probably shouldn’t mention Obama’s reference to his bowling abilities looking like the Special Olympics on the Tonight Show either.
Nor should I mention that the Obama supported the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which actually targets children with disabilities. The treaty is pro-abortion and 90% of all Down’s Syndrome babies are aborted. But maybe I shouldn’t mention that either, not without permission anyway.
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Recently we had a family over for dinner who brought their Down’s child. One thing I noticed is they did not treat him “specially”. They spoke in a normal tone of voice and had a wonderful dialog. He had an uncanny ability to remember every detail of everything he did with his parents.
They took him on trips around the world, camping, kayaking, cycling sometimes hundreds of miles through Alaska and up the coast of Maine on a bicycle built for two. He could recount the details of every fish he caught, every sight he saw with exquisite detail. I really enjoyed the stories and the enthusiasm with which he told them.
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Morality/ethics is a difficult issue. Even when there is a great deal of agreement, the reasons behind the agreement may differ quite a bit.
Morality/ethics about killing human beings is a difficult issue. Most people at this web site may agree that that murdering human beings is wrong. Evidently for many people at wmb, they oppose it because God tells them it is wrong. In my case, I suffer from empathy. I would not like to be murdered, making me reluctant to murder others. A young aunt-in-law of mine was murdered when she was a college student; I can understand the loss others feel when a loved one is murdered.
In some cases, I don’t care very much. Most people at wmb support capital punishment; I don’t support it, but I don’t care very much when it happens. I support alternatives to abortion such as adoption, but I don’t care very much. Although most people here feel very strongly about abortion, I find something puzzling and incoherent in most of the blog posts on the topic at worldmagblog. As I’ve said, it strikes me that there is something infantile about the obsession with this topic as a focus of moral outrage. Nevertheless, the whole topic of abortion strikes me as one of the most difficult moral issues of our current culture.
For one thing, abortion of a child one day before birth strikes me as clearly murder. Birth control bills and “day after pills” do not strike me as murder.
I would think that most people would not like to have a child with Down’s Syndrome. A child with Down’s Syndrome clearly strikes me as a human being and I would consider killing such a baby as murder. As technology becomes more sophisticated, it will become easier and easier to identify fetuses with signs of Down’s Syndrome, and the temptation to abort such fetuses will become stronger and stronger.
At the present moment, it seems as if the causes of Down’s Syndrome are mostly unknown, and there are few practical ways to prevent it from occurring.
Just as more effective methods of birth control might lead to fewer abortions in general, discovery about causes of (and hopefully methods to prevent) Down’s Syndrome would be a win-win phenonena.
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I don’t follow your specific morality in this case. You’re all over the place in a situational-ethics frame of mind. Or is that simply the way your mind works? Are some people more equal than others?
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Random, if you had to pick a point at which abortion is murder where would that point be?
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I presume #10 is addressed to me. It’s only since I’ve been reading worldmagblog that I have realized fully that I am a nihilist. It hasn’t fully sunk in yet, so I think of myself as a not evil nihilist. I may progress all the way to evil, but I think I am too old to change that much.
#11
Off the top of my head, killing a fetus that could survive on its own outside the mother’s body would strike me as murder. I am willing to consider other arguments; my mind is not fully made up. Arguments bad on high-pitched emotion, name-calling, supernatural explanations, and so on tend to move me in the other direction.
As I’ve said, the idea that there is some difference between a miscarriage and an abortion strike me as problematic. If there is a God and He performs miracles here and there (as many at this web site seem to believe), the fact that He kills so many babies seems troublesome. If there is a God, and He is merely the Great Watchmaker and never intervenes, then I would rather not hear any more about miracles and personal interventions in people’s individual lives.
If there is no God, as I tend to believe, then murder is pretty much how we choose to define it. In that framework, I would favor a) developing better birth control; b) giving people as many reasons not to have abortions as possible; c) leaving abortion legal; d) worrying more about murders, genocides, and crimes and misfortunes affecting already-born humans than about fetuses; e) supporting Mickey’s Nobel Peace prize nomination for next year for moving us away from nuclear wmb conflict.
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Scott, you are one lucky guy!
Thanks for passing some of the joy you experienced on to us.
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XION, great post. Thanks for sharing.
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#9, “Evidently for many people at wmb, they oppose [murder] because God tells them it is wrong. In my case, I suffer from empathy.”
It is not persuasive when someone presumes to caracature the alleged motives of some other “group” of people and then compares their own motives to that “group” for some reason.
That said, I do think that the clear instruction of our Creator, Sustainer and Savior — God — is about as good a motive as any human being can have for achieving his/her BEST behavior. But that motive can compatibly be combined with greqat empathy as well. It’s not an either/or.
Just my 2 cents.
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Most religions have some statement of the “golden rule,” which is basically an endorsement of empathy.
“It is not persuasive…”
Some day when worldmagblog collapses, and a tombstone is erected over the sixty-eleven trillions nonsensical comments posted here, that is as good an inscription to have on it as anything else.
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This entire threat contradicts and defies the sentiments of post #16. It is an inspiring thread and I am grateful to all who have shared, especially Scott for sharing a great experience in the first place.
I am persuaded of your decncy, Scott.
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#16 Random Noise “Some day when worldmagblog collapses, and a tombstone is erected over the sixty-eleven trillions nonsensical comments posted here,…”
Hmmm. That’s odd. Somehow Random predicts the exact number of comments he plans to post.
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Thanks for your post. My sister is a young woman who has Down syndrome.
Please remember in future posts and articles to use careful language when referring to people who have Down syndrome. You mentioned “Down syndrome teens and young adults.” However, these teens’ and young adults’ identities are not found in the fact that they have Down syndrome. A better way to put it would be “teens and young adults with Down syndrome.” These people are first of all individuals with varying personalities and interests who face joy, sadness, hopes, and trials just as you and I do. They, like you and I, are humans made in the image of God, and they, like you and I, are desperately in need of the cleansing blood of Christ.
I highly recommend reading this article from the Down Syndrome Congress on Language Guidelines: http://www.ndsccenter.org/resources/package4.php
I appreciate you writing such a positive post about people with Down syndrome. Please keep up the good work!
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#18
Babe Ruth was one of the finest hitters in the history of baseball. When he got his bag solidly on the ball, it often went a long, long way.
However, Babe was also one of the greatest strikeout champions of great hitters. When he took a mighty swing and missed the ball, it really generated a lot of wind but not much travel on what he was swinging at.
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