We’re excited to have Jill Moore, marketing specialist at Landscape Structures, as our guest blogger today. Read on to learn a little more about this North Carolina native, and be sure to check back as Jill will be a regular contributor. In fact, you should subscribe so that you’ll receive notifications of all our new posts by email.
I’m terrible at keeping up with current politically correct labels. It’s a real problem in my life because as a wheelchair user, you’d think I’d be an authority on it. However, I’m not sure what the term is this week. It moves from handicapped to wheelchair-bound, to disabled or special needs. Differently-abled. Handi-capable. I’ve heard it all.
When people ask me what I’d rather be called, I typically just go with “Jill works just fine.” Otherwise, I think everything else carries a flimsy stigma to it. Disabled, handicapped, special needs—it’s boring and it sounds lesser. We’re all differently-abled. Every time I get called “handi-capable,” a part of me can’t help but cringe, and I’m certainly not bound to my wheelchair by any means. I used to giggle when little kids asked me if I sleep in my wheelchair, but I am astounded by the amount of people that I encounter who believe this is a permanent setup. A wheelchair is just another mobility aid. It’s closer to a pair of shoes or glasses than a permanent implant. That, however, is a rant for a different day.
I was born with Spina Bifida. Essentially, this means I was born with a hole in my spine, which caused the lower half of my body to develop differently than my peers. At age 7, I popped a squat into a manual wheelchair and I stuck with it from then on. I’ve learned, however, that using a wheelchair makes me appear different enough to make people want to throw a label on me. I’ve never thought much about what I’d prefer that label to be until recently, and it started with a playground.
Since starting my journey in the world of playgrounds two years ago, I’ve met some incredible people with incredible stories. They all have one thing in common—an astounding penchant for spreading play to every single child. These are parents, friends, grandparents, community advocates—people of all walks of life who are taking the time to teach all children that they matter. This story comes from Buffalo, N.Y.
It was a snowy day in November. I was beyond tired, totally not wearing a warm enough jacket, hadn’t had nearly enough snacks that day, and if you ask me—it’s not supposed to snow until midnight on Dec. 24, and not a moment sooner. A colleague and I were scoping out an inclusive playground in the area. We pulled in to see a man painstakingly removing snow from each of the shade structures on the playground. Those aren’t usually kept up during the winter due to snow weighing them down, so for someone to be religiously removing the snow seemed like a huge labor of love in itself. We pulled in and greeted the man, and I soon learned him to be the head and the heart behind the playground itself—Jason Evchich.
Jason is one of those people that speaks with contagious enthusiasm. The first thing that he told us was that he hated the term “special needs.” I had to agree with him on that one, but I had to find out why that term irked him so much. Turns out, Jason has three kids. Two of which, Mason and Matthew, were born with an undiagnosed form of what I later learned to be known as Hypomyelinating Leukodystrophy. Haven’t heard of it? Don’t worry—I had to do some research of my own. It’s so rare that it doesn’t even formally have a name—just a number. This condition hindered their development to the point that they can’t walk, talk or join their older sister, McKenna, in play.
He hated the idea of his children being stuck with the “special needs” label just because they had to move differently—and even more, he hated the idea of them being left on the outskirts of play. With that, he introduced us to his preferred term, “limited edition.” When we hear something is limited edition, we don’t think it lesser. We think of it as unique, special, one of a kind, probably expensive, and any number of alternative cool titles before we hit the idea that it’s different in a negative way.
Jason was SO passionate about bringing play to his children that he was ready to build a public playground in his backyard for the whole neighborhood to enjoy. His wife wasn’t entirely on board with their backyard being the neighborhood hot spot, so they compromised and built Mason’s Mission just across the street. With the idea of an inclusive playground for all of his children to play together and make new friends in mind, Mason’s Mission was founded and a force was rallied to build an inclusive playground so that children of all abilities could join in play.
It’s safe to say that all of us are Limited Edition in some variety. Nobody fits into the perfect box of a “normal human.” We’re all unique. We’re all special. We’re all one-of-a-kind, and I have to say, Limited Edition was finally a label I was pretty excited to say I belonged to.
