Mimi's New Experience

Jared and Mimi brought me lunch at work today and ate with me. She talked everyone's ears off and I decided to take her out the back to meet some clients. Disabled people aren't totally new to her but this breed was.


I took her to a table to meet one of my favorite people. This was "Marty" whom I referred to in an earlier post. He has Down's Syndrome and the three other people at his table had DS, too. Mimi had her teddy bear, Brady, that goes everywhere with her so I had her show them Brady. I told Mimi that Marty wants to be a policeman and that's why he was wearing a police hat and shirt. Then he showed us his badge which was clipped on his belt. "Look!" he said excitedly.


As we left the work area Mimi said, "Are all those guys brothers?" I said no. "They look like they're brothers."

I explained with their disability they have some of the same traits, like their eyes. She said, "I like their voices because they sound like little kids. Does their disease make them nice, because they were all nice? What else does their disease do?" So I explained sometimes they think a little slower and even though they're grown ups they think like kids. When I saw her this afternoon she was still talking about how cute their voices were and how nice they were.

Okay, I know disease probably wasn't the right word, but I was explaining this to an eight year old. I was glad she got to meet some of my favorite people and they could meet her and Brady.