OR blogger 3

In the third section of reading, we are introduced to Jesse, Beth’s long-time boyfriend. The mention of him seems to bring great interest to the world of Rachel’s friends, who “Initially think its just so cute, but within seconds realize with a shock that Beth has womanly longings” (109). This disbelief over Beth’s emotional capacity shows just how far society has pushed mentally retarded people away from the realm of “normality.” Rachel herself admits that fact that she doesn’t know much when it comes to Jesse and Beth. Later, after much pestering, Beth yields this information: “What I like about Jesse is He is SExey and has Sexey legs and he can ride all over on his bike and he is Smart. and a great kisser. and he is Fun. To look at. too. All the time OK now you have it” (117). This letter, though it is worded like a child’s, holds all of the emotion of a woman. Here is the proof that mentally retarded people are “normal,” it is here, in their emotions and desires. Jesse, too, gets this prejudiced crap, not only for his race, but for his status as a retarded person.

A person passing him on the street would most likely find it shocking that he is a black belt in karate. Jesse, who grew up in the slums of Georgia where hostility towards his African-American heritage was open, is used to the glaring eyes of the public. His story is retold countless times to Rachel’s flabbergasted friends, “He lost his vision in [his left eye] at thirteen, he once told me, when he was playing alone at an abandoned construction site and stepped on a pipe that swung up and slammed into his face. Although he had the wherewithal to stumble to a hospital…his sight was so damaged that he could do no more than sit, forlorn, beside the entrance” (110). This tale of hurt would seem outrageous for a “regular” human to endure, but the fact that it happened to Jesse is an entirely different thing. Most people put I his situation wouldn’t perform half as well as he did under the stress of pain and confusion, and few people could make it to the hospital like he did. Yet when passing him on the road, you would never think him capable of an act that great, or even the mastery to tae kwon do. When Rachel invites the couple out to lunch, she sees first-hand the glares of other patrons in the restaurant, observing “There’s so much separateness in this almost empty room that I can’t breathe” (116). Jesse, though, stops her from doing anything about it, by saying “People is gonna look all day, and they might say they don’t think it’s right, but it’s not really for them to judge. As long as you be nice to a person, looks don’t matter. You in this world, you gotta accept it. (116). He shows here wisdom and acceptance beyond his years, especially for one who has been through so much in his life. Here is a man who has been ridiculed, shoved around for something he cannot control, looking with perfect clarity at the cruelness of the world and accepting it, even with all of its faults.

OR blogger 2

In the second section I am reading, the mood drastically changes. It goes from observant and grudging to a series of bitter flashbacks. Life with a mentally retarded sister is more than a teenage girl can handle. The little games they played as children are less and less appealing to the pubescent Rachel. As Beth, who desires only to play like they used to, tries to talk Rachel into games, she gets more and more distant “But mostly, Beth tries to spend time with me, and I say no. ‘No, I don’t want to watch Adam-12. I don’t want to sing to your dolls.’ She gets a hurt look. ‘Go call your own friends’” (Simon 102). This rebellion, though expected from teens, is the first true discontent Rachel shows towards her sister. Embarrassed by her childish ways, Rachel wants nothing more than to escape from the life in which she must be responsible for a retarded sister. Rachel hears that word, over and over again at school, kids calling themselves ‘retarded’ because they failed that test. Rachel knows that people like her sister with disabilities are frowned upon, mocked openly by society, and the shame of having a retarded sister is more than she can handle on the bus ride home from school. She hears the kids laughing, pointing at her sister who waits for her bus every day after school. Rachel remembers “As my bus pulls up to our house, there she is at the curb in semi-naked cowgirl glory, shooting off water double-handed, beaming up at my window. The bus erupts. I seize my books and bolt down the aisle, my head down. The laughter slams against my ears. I have never heard anything so loud. I have never felt such humiliation” (Simon 104). This humiliation, this ridicule, why is it aimed at mentally retarded people? The fact that Rachel and Beth a laughed at due to a condition out of their control is sickening. It is then that Rachel learns hatred, towards those kids, and towards a sister who brings naught but shame to her older sibling.
This growing hatred and embarrassment only grows when Rachel tells her mom about the bus incident. Rachel begs her mother to force Beth to stay inside so Rachel could go home in peace. Her mother refuses, saying “You shouldn’t be ashamed. They should be ashamed. I will not hide your sister from the world” (Simon 104-105). Rachel, furious and sobbing, bemoans her future, where she knows she will have to take care of Beth. She cries “Its not fair that, on top of being a teenager, which is bad enough as it is, I have this extra worry! It’s not fair that I know-and Laura and Max know-that we can never think of a future that doesn’t include Beth! It could happen to any one of you. When you’re older, save money for her, so when we’re gone you can take care of her. We don’t believe in the back room. She’ll be in plain sight, as one of the family. Never put her in an institution. Ever ever ever. Make room for her in your own house....I sob at the injustice of it all. I know it’s true, and I know mom’s right, But I hate it all so much that I decide I’ll walk home from school from now on”(Simon 105). To have such resentment against one’s own sister is the kind of thing that tears families apart. Rachel is clearly struggling to accept her sister, besieged by waves of fury and shame. She knows that she should love her sister, but when society is teaching her and every other child on the earth to hate Beth, what can she do? Rachel knows she should love Beth, treat her like a sister should, but Rachel also wants to lead a normal life, one where she can live carefree and happily without the weight of her sister on her shoulders.

OR blogger 1

The book I am reading for OR this semester at school is called Riding the Bus with my Sister. This is the story of Beth, a mentally retarded woman, who rides the buses of her small Pennsylvania city every day. She is occasionally visited by her older sister, Rachel, a professor with a busy schedule and no life to call her own “My life, I told myself, bore little resemblance to the lives of other workers in corporate America…But who was I kidding? I was like most of my peers: hyperbusy, hypercritical, hyperventilating” (Simon 7). They are perfect opposites, despite the fact that they were born only 11 months apart “I struggle awake and into my clothes: black sweater, black leggings…She owns a wardrobe of blazingly bright colors and can leap out of bed before dawn” (Simon 3). During one of her infrequent visits, Beth asks Rachel to ride the buses with her for one year. Reluctantly, Rachel agrees, and takes a journey with her sister that changes her life forever.
On the matter of the bus riding, Rachel confesses “Some days its sheer oddness baffled me; other days I was disheartened by her choosing to master bus routes rather than doing something productive, like a job. I had long embraced eccentrics in novels and iconoclasts in the newspaper stories, yet I was too dismayed by Beth’s particular devotion to the busses to be willing to acquaint myself with her life” (Simon 11). She is clearly ashamed of her sister and ashamed of herself for feeling that way. For Rachel, Beth has always been an “oddity” who she cannot accept into her own organized life.

Simon, Rachel. Riding the Bus with my Sister. New York: Penguin Group, 2003.