throwing away normal

This past winter, my family and I got pulled into the gravitational field of the wildly popular PBS series called Downton Abbey. It's brilliantly done, with lots of parallel story lines woven throughout. One of the story lines involves a butler who almost loses his job because of a war injury that makes him walk with a profound limp. At one point he visits a brace and limb maker (they likely weren't called orthotists back then) and asks for a device to correct how he walks, and he's given this awful, clunky contraption that looks a lot like a leg brace and it's supposed to help his leg grow longer. But it causes him awful pain that he can barely stand, though no one notices because the brace is under his pants.

Finally the secret gets out, and the man is next found standing with leg brace in hand on the dock of a lake. He flings that awful thing through the air and into the water, where it sinks quietly out of sight.

I have fantasies like that. Standing on the edge of water or a cliff and throwing my braces into the abyss. Of course, if I did that I'd be unable to walk, so I'll leave the drama for Masterpiece Theater and keep the fantasies in my head.

But the scene reminded me of 2 memories from childhood. The first was when I was about 8 or 9, and a friend remarked: "You know, when you're in your 40s there will probably be a pill you can take to make you normal." It sounded good to me at the time, until I really started to think it through. What if the pill really did work? I couldn't even think about the pain that might ensure as my hands and feet stretched out to "normal." And wouldn't I have to re-learn everything I had worked so hard to do on my own?

The second memory: I went to a hand surgeon once when I was in 7th grade, and he claimed he could operate on my hands and make them look completely "normal." "Oh, by the way," he mused, almost casual-like. "You'll lose all function in your hands. But that shouldn't matter if they look good." I remember getting really angry at the time. Did he truly believe he was doing me a favor?

The butler in Downton Abbey threw away his brace because he had come to peace with his disability. He decided that living with a limp was far better than living on the false hope of looking "normal" in the eyes of the world. Maybe it's time we throw away the term "normal" into the bottom of the lake as well.