Dis/comfort

For reasons I cannot easily explain, I have long enjoyed reading the Miss Manners column. While I do not remember her explanations of how to eat, say, snails, one of Miss Manners's responses has stuck in my mind for a number of years.

In this letter, the writer asks Miss Manners how she can convince her sister-in-law, who lost one of her legs, to stop wearing shorts and bathing suits to family barbecues and pool parties. The writer complains that her sister-in-law's stump makes other family members uncomfortable, but the sister-in-law refuses to cover up. In response, Miss Manners suggests that the letter-writer might try looking her sister-in-law in the eye when speaking to her, instead of focusing on her missing leg.

Recently, I find myself thinking about this letter a lot. My son's tics have been severe for several months. We have explained his tics and Tourette's to other people (adults and children) at art class and at tae kwon do. The reaction has been overwhelmingly supportive and positive, even though my son's major tics are painful and sometimes alarming to behold. Some children help O when he has a major tic, other children continue with their work, unaffected. Nobody is complaining about O's tics or shunning him because of the strange things his body insists on doing.

Adults sometimes have a different response than children do, though. Before we explained what was happening, some adults laughed at O's tics. Others are visibly disturbed by them -- whether this is due to concern or personal discomfort is anyone's guess. Some people, including people who have not met O, people who merely hear that he has Tourette's, seem to feel that O should not cause other people discomfort by mingling with them while he is ticcing. If O is not able to control his tics, they say, he should not come to a particular event or participate in some activity, because it is important that everyone who is at said event or activity feels "comfortable."

What does this mean? What is "comfortable," and how is it being measured? What about the comfort of the person who is being excluded because of something he cannot control? In my opinion -- not that anyone asked -- "we want everyone to feel comfortable" is a fuzzy, ill-defined, arbitrary, difficult-to-enforce notion. It is the lamest of lame excuses, and it sounds a lot like "this scares me, and I am going to use my own fear and ignorance as an excuse." To those people, I would say, quit focusing on my child's tics, and learn to look him in the eye.