Tomorrow evening I will be interviewed on stage by a museum official. I will be an interpreter, talking from experience as a disability rights lawyer and activist. In "special" schools and camps for children with physical and mental disabilities, I grew up knowing we were a category of person that the world did not want. Most of us had a story of some doctor advising our parents to put up away or to let us die. We owed our survival to parents who had irrationally  bonded with us. We knew we were lucky and hoped our luck would hold. To increase the chance of surviving, we tended to be charming. We developed By the time I roll onto the stage the next night, I've thought a lot about there and here, then and now. When the first question comes, I tell them about my fascination with the wheelchair, and somehow it sounds funny, and laughter fills the room. We talk from the horror of Nazis killing (Nazis once killed the disabled patients as useless) to a funny confession that I, too, tend to stare at disabled people on the street. What has come over me? In this room, people with disabilities in thrilling variety make me feel at home. Here people, disabled and not, are gathered by choice. I haven't forgotten that 2 million people remain in US disability institutions, that some disabled children still cannot attend mainstream schools, that too many of us live in poverty. But I can't hold onto anger and sorrow for I feel a shared sense of possibility, a drive for a world that will embrace both the fit and the unfit and hold them so dear that the division dies. What's the author's attitude towards the future?
Desperate Hopeful Negative Objective