I went to the bar not long ago to play pool. The place was kind of dead and there where no pool players there so I hung around to see if any shooters will show up. The bartender, who knows me, asked if I can do a little magic for a guy sitting at the bar. She introduced me to the guy and I could see that he had a disability (I call them differences). By the way he moved and tried to talk (no real words just kind of mumbled) I guessed he had MS. Having worked at summer camps for kids with "differences" I'm pretty used to performing for people like this.

After I did a couple of tricks (he seemed to really like them) he directed my attention to a piece of laminated paper in front of him. I've seen these before. When person can't talk or write they'll have one of these word sheets. There are a bunch of words and a sort of keyboard layout. They just point to the words they want to say or spell them out on the keyboard part.

I can't remember the exact words he said but the first thing was something about liking the magic and that "you're cool". Then he started talking about the bar tender. He was hitting on her big time. That alone told me that this guy was smart and his "difference" doesn't effect his mind power.

He handed me a sheet of paper and I read it. It was basically his story about why he is the way he is. It had a couple of pictures of him when he was younger. One of them was him winning some award for athletics (Looked like track or something like that). It talked about how he was very healthy and had a lot going for him. So you can see that was once "normal". Then it talked about him being in a car crash and had a major head injury. He had to learn how to talk and eat and all that all over again and he's still trying to learn how to talk. There where little bits of comedy in the story that tells a lot about his character. It said that if he ever fell down he'd probably make some joke about it. How you shouldn't let your wife or girlfriend spend to much time with him alone because he'd hit on her and things like that.

After meeting this guy I think about how people sometimes say that it's good to see someone like me with a "difference" (deafness) go out and still do things in front of people such as being a magician. I've always felt a little strange about that. in a good way because it's nice to hear from time to time but I don't see it as that big a deal. After meeting this guy I realize that what I have is nothing compared to what he's going through. So if I ever feel down about my deafness (it gets me from time to time when I feel left out). I'm going to think about this guy and remind myself that if he can still hit on woman then I can work out my little issues.

Ron Jaxon