MY PARENTS DIDN'T AGREE WITH THE DOCTORS! NOT AT ALL!

CHAPTER 2.
“WHAT THE DOCTORS THOUGHT…”
What the doctors at the time thought was that I wasn’t going to amount to much, and that I should be put into a mental institution. It was a hard thing to take for Mom and Dad after all the specialists that they’d contacted and the advice that they were seeking. That’s what happened to a disabled person in those dark days of the 1960s. Many of these would be put into state schools and institutions like Fernald & Wrentham. Or they were lobotomized, which was a worse fate!
Most parents then would have taken their advice, but not my parents. Absolutely not. They said that they would fight to get me educated, no matter what. They were looking around for schools that would help me get that chance. And they called people in the General Court to find programs for autistic children like myself.
In the meantime, I’d been going to kindergarten at the Ahern School, where we would mostly sing songs, do crafts and such. One afternoon, we were going to see a film at the school, but I got scared and ran away home. I lived in Dorchester at the time(I was born in St. Elizabeth’s hospital in Uphams Corner a few years back). My neighborhood was a cheerful Irish one with families whose parents came from Ireland(or Canada).
Near Savin Hill I had Doney and Aunt Dotty; down the street I had Uncle Jack and Marion Dalton and their brood; across the street, I had the Thurbide family(who were Scottish and came from Cape Breton in Canada), and downstairs I had Nana and Aunt Franny, who was a little wild. I also had an Uncle named Joe who was mentally handicapped as I was. He was a great man who worked at the City Incinerator and would sometimes bring me a Coke to drink on the way home. We enjoyed his company at the house on Centre Street, as well as at the cottage we had in Marshfield.
At the time he was growing up, Joe didn’t have much of the educational opportunities that my Mom and Dad looked for. It was a different time, as I already told you beforehand. But Joe did the best he could and helped me to enjoy life to its fullest.
Growing up in Dorchester was like being in Heaven. You knew everybody there, and they would help each other whenever they needed it the most. After all, most of the kids were educated at the parish school, went to Mass at the Church on Sundays, ran the Irish dances and always got away to the beaches during the summer.
We grew up in a time when nothing was open on Sunday, the TV was limited and people would sing and play music to pass the time away. I remember Mom telling me that the time he and Dad were dating, it was forbidden to have dances on Sundays. They’d go to a dance at a club, but if the cops were coming ‘round, someone would get up on a table and sing until they’d gone, then they’d be back up at it. Today, you can almost get away with anything; I won’t get into the gory details.
Mom and Dad were determined that they would get me a decent, quality education for me. Little did they imagine is that while they were trying to get help for me, other children like myself would benefit from their lobbying.
And that’s what gave me the inspiration to write this story, to tell you how anyone can beat the odds and make a life out for himself or herself. And if I can beat the odds, so can anyone.