The R-Word

Last year actress Lindsey Lohan was in the habit of using the word 'retarded' whenever she meant 'stupid,' 'silly,' 'baseless,' or any of a number of other more appropriate words. Lorriane Sheehan, president of Arc Of The United States, reprimanded her saying that "there are few more deeply wounding words than these, which are painful reminders that people with disabilities are still not fully welcome in our society." I like to think that I'm more sophisticated with my vocabulary than Ms. Lohan, but every now and then I use 'retarded' lightly, although more often than not I keep it in my head.

This evening I was eating dinner at the Towers, and I was sitting close to a table of a half-dozen guys who were discussing blackjack, baseball, pizza, beer - all things I enjoy, but not things to which I devote a lot of discussion. Apparently they had received some sort of free pizza deal through some situation I couldn't fully grasp from their conversation. One guy who had been thinking deeply suddenly exclaimed Wait guys! Just listen to this. We still tipped the delivery guy for those pizzas, right? Someone said, yeah, they had all chipped in a buck. So that's like twelve bucks, our thinker continued. That's not free pizza. That's just a discount or something! At this point I muttered to myself, "What is this guy? Retarded?" Just then our thinker asked his tablemates What do they think we are? Retarded?