I think I’ve reached label overload—anxiety, depression, learning disabled, myriad disorders, alternative learning styles, age, family status, sexual orientation, partnered, married, single, divorced, well-behaved, behavior-challenged, talented and gifted, developmentally delayed—ARGHHHHHH! I’m ready for a little label free living…
I’m really okay with self-identification. I like to use a few of those monikers myself to share with people how I identify myself and how I feel about the similarities and differences that I think I have with others in the way I live my life. But, as a self-proclaimed labeler, I want to be the first one to stand up and say “Enough is enough!”
I was watching television the other night with one of my kids and one commercial after another came on with a label and diagnosis for a variety of physical and mental conditions, disorders and activities. Things that ten years ago would have just been “things”—if they were anything at all. Remember the days of “growing pains,” “aging” and “don’t touch it and it will go away?” Ah, the good old days before labels and diagnoses (diagnosi?) were handed out like political buttons in an election year.
I would like a label free day—one where human children wake up and head to their ordinary schools and a human mom goes to her typical job, then we all come together at the end of our normal day to have a normal meal with label free food and sit around and do normal stuff. What is normal? Ah, that’s what gets us all—how about if everything were normal? After all, when my teenagers wail at me “Why can’t we be a normal family?!” I answer in my politically incorrect manner—“We ARE a normal family.” Wouldn’t it be lovely for one day to be a label free family living a label free life? Just one, long, luscious, label free day…