Chromosome 21

“Hey Robbie!  I killed your canary!”

“No, Robbie!  I killed your canary!”

We circled our prey like pack animals, LORDS OF THE FLIES.  It always ended the same way; Robbie catching one of us kids in his dinner plate sized hands.  We’d squeal with fright and run away, game over, except for the kid he’d trapped in his bear paws.  Shaking with fury and hurt, he’d hold us up like toys, and look in our eyes, wondering what he had done to deserve our cruelty.  Then, almost as if he’d forgotten what the fuss was about, he’d set us down and go his way.  He never hurt us.

Robbie was what we kids called “a goof.”  This was said without malice or irony.  In late 1950’s and early 60’s pre-PC America, people with Down Syndrome were dismissively called “goofs.”  Eventually, this gave way to a “kinder” expression.  Mongoloids.  The improvement is lost on me.

According to the CDC, Down Syndrome is a “condition in which a person has an extra copy of chromosome 21.  This extra chromosome changes how the body and brain develop, which can lead to physical and mental challenges.”

That description, while accurate, leaves out one important side-effect.  Down Syndrome was always accompanied by psycho-emotional abuse from those that should’ve known better.  You.  Me.  Us.

Robbie was just one of the man-childs that went to school with us “norms.”  With no funding, understanding, or political will, separate facilities were not made available.  Better to hide them in plain sight; a curious, scary subset in our midst.  Parents and teachers were not happy to have to baby-sit these strange creatures.  Parents worried they posed a threat to us kids, ignoring the threat we posed to them.  The “special ed” students learned, ate, and socialized in isolation, a raft of unexplained misfits that were tolerated, if barely.  They lined up separately for recess, had their own dedicated corner of the cafeteria, strict private use of the bathrooms.  Teachers threatened to banish us to their classrooms if we didn’t behave.  No wonder we stared at them with fear and morbid curiosity.

In addition to the lousy gene-hand Robbie had been dealt, he also had the curse (blessing?) of giantism, another genetic mutation that made him big and powerful as a house.  Normally docile and uninterested in us, we discovered he could be roused through taunting; a repetitive chant in which we claimed to have “killed his canary.”  Whether or not Robbie even had a canary, no one knew or cared.  All that mattered was, when cornered, we could drive him into a dangerous rage.  I know there is a special karmic hell for the kids we were.  In truth, my heart was never in it.  My taunts were half-hearted.  But like so much unconscionable mob mentality, I lacked the courage to fight it.  We were learning the social rules, as well.  Lie low in the pack or be shredded by it.  Law of the jungle.  But when I remember the sadness in his eyes, the non-understanding of what he’d done to deserve this torture, I know shame. 

God forgive us.  God forgive me.

Along the twists and turns of life, “goofs” continued to loom large in my life.  I developed a special fondness for them.  They filled a soft spot in my heart.  For some cosmic karmic reason, they were never far from me.  As a young man I lived next to a half-way house, (a “half-wit” house according to the neighbors,) a home for folks not fully functional in society on their own, but one where they could live in community, in relative safety, with others like them, also blessed with a double dose of chromosome 21.  They learned to hold simple, necessary jobs and to earn their own money, giving them a sense of pride.  A sense of purpose.  And perhaps more importantly, the idea, the  concept, of independence.  Of possibility.

One of the live-in staff told me the biggest problem they faced was keeping them “apart.”  At night, they’d slip into each other’s rooms.  A double chromosome 21 did nothing to dampen their ardor; if anything, it seemed to fan it.  They were frisky little buggers with an out-sized urge-to-merge and keeping them out of each other’s beds and pants required a crowbar and a heap of resolute patience.  They would not be denied.  They would find workarounds to reach-arounds.  I feigned horror to my confidante while secretly thinking, ‘YES!!!  Go goofs!  Make an army and eat the world!’  

One of my favorite films of all time, the brilliant KING OF HEARTS, tells of a village in WW1 France.  Fearing an imminent invasion, the townspeople abandon it, whereupon the residents of the insane asylum take ownership, stepping into their lives and roles and intrigues.  It is a beautiful, heartbreaking work.  I won’t give anymore away, other than to say they did no worse at running the shit-show that was to come than you or I would have.  Look for it.  Find it.  Watch it.  You’re welcome.

My next door neighbors would greet me, Mister Alki, on their way home from their jobs.  Ofttimes we’d shoot hoops at the parent psych facility behind our houses.  Proud, they’d tell me of their workday, moving on to who they had the hots for and who had the hots for them.  They’d tell me who they were going to marry and speak of the children of their own they’d have one day.  I’m told it’s possible for two Down Syndrome parents to make perfect babies.  I was pulling for them.  

We were friends.  They were great neighbors; quiet, respectful, decent.  I kept an eye out for Robbie hoping to make amends.

Fast forward, many years and several decades.  Living in New York, a man-child myself, struggling mightily as a musician artist in the “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” world of the Big Apple.  Picture a busy workday, a hectic noontime break.  Every working boy and girl holding down a nine-to-five, rushing willy-nilly to squeeze two hours of chores into a half-hour lunch break, stuffing two nutritious slices of cheesy, greasy ‘za down their gullet.  A bank on the northwest corner of Sixth Ave and 14th Street.  Standing in a stinkin’, sweatin’ line of impatient bipeds hoping to make it to the teller window without having to leave the line to return to the grind, when…

“Puthy willowth!  I love puthy willowth!”

Well, heck, I love “puthy willowth” too, hadn’t I just bought a clutch of them from an outside street vendor before entering the bank?  Indeed, I had.

This self-proclaiming lover of pussy willows was none other than a young man with Down Syndrome, standing in line, with his mother.  The fine lad was fondling one of the branches, rubbing the soft, furry nipple of a bloom in pure, sensual delight.  Before he put it in his mouth, his mother gently removed his hand.  “Leave the man’s pussy willows alone, Jimmy.  Those aren’t for you.”  He sighed his disappointment.  She smiled her embarrassment.

“Ah, but they are!” I said.  Happy to oblige his delight, I plucked a strand or three and handed them to him.  The keys to the Taj Mahal could not have made him happier.  I felt Robbie’s eyes on me.  I think I had just released his canary.  

It was then that a hard-angled business woman, also in line, tsk-tsked her annoyance.  Somehow my exchange with Jimmy was an insult to her.  Though our private moment had cost her nothing in time, no inconvenience, it was as if it had.  I offered her a pussy willow.  She declined.  I offered her to go ahead of me; she accepted my gesture ungraciously.

“I killed your canary,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing.”

That was when I came to understand something profound about the human genome, that whole god-strand of DNA / RNA entwined helix thing.  It’s not about chromosome 21.  It’s about a different gene, the one that gives empathy.  Blue eyes and blonde hair be damned.  It’s about the gaping gap in the genetic code where some love chromosome holds place.  Robbie had it.  Jimmy pussy-willow had it.  Genetic research tells us behavioral aberrations might be controlled and engineered.  Flipping a switch on or off in the code might fix more than physical qualities, might in fact make pathological deficiencies as bygone as polio.  

We are living now with technology that can make a wife-beater not beat his wife.  A ruthless businessman forget the maxim, “It’s only business; nothing personal,” while crushing a competitor.  The serial killer who goes to church Sunday morning after doing his thing Saturday night.  But there are moral and ethical lines that blur in creating a perfect race of perfect beings.  Others have tried to do that with disastrous consequences.  We’ve got some soul-searching science to do.

It’s said that children come into the world as pure blank slates, bubbles of love that learn to hate.  That what is written on these pure blank slates is what they become.  But if that is true, mightn’t the inverse also be true?  

It has been a blink of an eye on the cosmic timeline since it was acceptable to drag a cave woman back to the cave by the hair.  To settle every disagreement with a club or a rock to the head.  We do it still, but with bigger rocks and clubs with far greater consequence.  Maybe it is not cruelty that is inherently learned by children, but rather love that must be taught.

Good night, Robbie.  Sorry about the canary.

Hoping everyone had a fun, safe Halloween. Now everybody, please remember kindness no matter who wins.